Asthma

Picture this:

You’re asthmatic and feel like no air is getting to your lungs as much as you breathe or even take in some deep breaths. You decide to go to your bedroom and open your windows. Things are starting to get better, but your sinusitis takes offense. So the nose that was breathing in the ka air is now blocked, and you’re sneezing like it’s an Olympic competition.

I surrendered. Where I should have used one drug to help the lungs, I ended up using two to settle what looked like a siblings’ fight for attention.

While I waited for my respiratory system to stabilize, I remembered an incident in my high school. It’s something that comes up every now and then, possibly whenever asthma threatens to kick my butt.

I had an asthmatic attack during an examination. I managed to finish my paper and started walking towards the nurse’s residence. Lucky for me, I found her returning to her home. She was quite chatty and funny. The kind that would drag anyone.

She tried to tease me, and I couldn’t give back the energy. She noticed things weren’t well, and because it was the end of term, she said there was no medication. She called one of the teachers, and she told me we could wait for him to bring the coaster and have us taken to the hospital, just a few meters away from school. We stood in silence. Minutes went by, and I asked her if we couldn’t just walk to the hospital. Every minute mattered. Every breath was calculated. She asked if I could walk, and I was willing to do so. I’d waited so long while I got my paper finished.

Before she made the final decision, another girl was being carried down towards us. The sight was quite hysterical – things I’d grown used to seeing in my years of secondary school. Good enough, the coaster also arrived at that moment.

We were driven to the hospital. The doctors and nurses hurried towards the other girl. Rendering all the help they deemed fit.

Where I was seated, I was growing tired and faint. I think being indoors with less air to breathe worsened my situation. I tried to call the nurse, but she couldn’t hear me. I may have just propped my head backwards and closed my eyes.

I don’t know how long I stayed in the position, but I remember hearing the doctor almost lamenting, “But it’s this one who’s badly off”. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn’t. I could hear a change in the environment. Things were being done in haste. I could hear the nurse going off at the other girl. What I may have forgotten to tell you about our darling school nurse is that she couldn’t easily snap. I could hear chaos, but I wasn’t in full witness to it. I was present yet somehow far.

When they got me on the nebulizer, my body was no longer on the edge. I relaxed and drifted off – I don’t know for how long, but when I woke up, I saw some more teachers and the deputy headmistress.

“Scary, yes, but why y’all standing there looking at me? It’s just an attack,” I thought to myself. Waking up to adults standing in fear was quite unsettling. I don’t like being in the laser focus of many eyes. I do not remember what small chit chat happened before we went back to school, but I do remember (days after the chaos) the headmistress I’d never spoken to asking how I was doing. I knew then that the whole administration may have stood still at some point.

***

I zoomed back to the present. I do not remember the exact girl in this story, but it seemed to be common practice for kids to make it look like having asthma was such a cool thing, so some did whatever they could to mimic an asthmatic attack.

Too bad for them, most schools do not have well-trained nurses, so these people had their bodies subjected to drugs they shouldn’t have been getting. And I say subjected to because some asthma medicine has drastic long-term side effects.

Besides that, if at all, that girl was just all games and play; she stands in the shoes of the people who make less of mental health and the ones who treat it as a trend. You are stealing good health from those who are suffering.