How Asthma Changed My Life

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Asthma. A condition that changed my family’s life exponentially. My younger brother, Joshua, was diagnosed with asthma around the age of 9. We first took him to the hospital because of what at the time we didn’t know was an asthma attack. Joshua couldn’t breathe, when he tried to catch a breath, he would start gasping and nothing filled his lungs. He recalls the experience as confusing and scary, he didn’t know what was happening to him. My parents ran to the hospital to comprehend what Joshua was experiencing, I on the other hand, seeing my brother unable to breathe and taking shallow breaths confused and scared me. After his diagnosis Joshua was obligated to use his inhaler four times a day, and took it to school. One night, around midnight my brother was taking labored breaths, he couldn’t sleep and my mom and dad chaotically ran around the house searching for his medicine and the keys to the car. On their way to the hospital my brother’s breathing became steady, and so my mom was about to turn back home, when my he woke up and told her that he felt awful, so she proceeded to the hospital. At the doctors, he told my mom that my brother was having a severe asthma attack and bringing him was the best thing. …show more content…

Every penny, every dollar we obtained was saved for our future trips. After we found out my brother’s diagnosis, we put any plans of traveling on the back burner, when we traveled, we had to make sure that my brother had his inhaler. We wanted to make sure that when we went outdoors Joshua’s asthma wouldn’t act up. If it did, we all got anxious and decided to go straight home. When he would get sick, everything got worse, he wouldn’t be able to breathe or sleep and neither could my parents. When he would go to the hospital, he would have to blow into a spirometry test and blow out the “candles”. The first time he had to do this he failed the test, and from that point on everything has

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