I just wanted to share my story with you all in the believe that it brings you some encouragement and hope.

This is a story of my pursuit to destroy asthma.

I was diagnosed with asthma at the age of 2 where I nearly died from riding a horse. Living with asthma wasn't something that brought a lot of confidence and peace into my life. I was forever chained to my inhaler for fear of that sudden asthma attack that would squeeze the breath from my lungs. Fear has been a major theme in my life and something that even today I struggle with. Something that I have come to be aware of is that fear wants to infect every aspect of your life and completely destroy any joy and hope you try and have.

Especially as a young child I was completely embarrassed of having asthma and taking an inhaler. I remember being on the playground at school and having to go around the corner to use medication because I was so scared of other people seeing me as weak and different. Because of this sense of being weak I felt like I needed to battle asthma every chance I could get. I would push myself physically to try and prove to myself that I can conquer asthma. This was to no avail, as it would always come and bring me to my knees huffing and puffing for air, with that fear that comes with tightening of breath being ever present. I remember once in my early teens I decided to mow the lawn (this was a huge trigger for me). As I mowed I focused on pushing past the wheeze and not stopping. I finished mowing he lawn but was so wheezy that I couldn't even put the lawn mower into the garage. It took everything within me to ring the doorbell continuously until my mom answered. Seeing me close to passing out she ran, got my inhaler and started pumping ventolin into me like a deflated tire. There was many episodes like this in my life, ones that I never was able to defeat.

Fast forward to 2016. After suffering a serious stomach virus, Listeria, I woke up one day to a completely swollen shut elbow. If you haven’t experienced it, its hard to explain but I could not bend my elbow no matter how hard I tried it would move. This started to effect other joints in my body, wrist, knees and ankles. I was diagnosed with reactive arthritis. The only thing that was offered was a pill called Meloxicam. If you are taking this you know the side effects are insane. I had to go into the hospital once a month to make sure my kidneys were failing, I would get more sensitive to the sun, upset stomach, nausea and the list goes on. This is where everything changed.

See post 2 for a happy ending

#Asthma #ChronicFatigue  #reactivearthritis   #Hope  #encouragment   #Healing  #mystory #Holistic #asthmafree