•

It was around the third week of March 2018. I had just finished 7th grade,The day of the prize distribution was nearing. When I woke up on the day of prize distribution, I could not breathe. It was like someone was pressing my chest and was preventing me from breathing. I had to resort to breathing through the mouth. I was shocked as it was something that had rarely happened before with such intensity. I skipped the award function and was taken to the doctor; prescribed medicine. Then the breathing problem start to become a routine affair.

Every other week I would get a bout of breathlessness. It became increasingly unbearable. I spent most nights sleepless sitting on a chair with a night lamp for company. I would take a pillow and try to rest my head on it. But in a curved position, it made breathing even more difficult as my chest would get pressed. (Today, my back is almost permanently curved because of years and years of this). I would use two to three pillows so that my head would just fall upto the height of the neck, at the max. If my head went below, breathing would become even more difficult.. Many a time, I fell asleep around three or four AM - in the wee hours of the morning, just out of sheer fatigue or the after effects of tablets which used to kick in only during very early mornings. Those days were the hardest for me, physically. I used to just sit and ponder like a businessman who'd lost everything.

For years together. My mind thoughts kept ramming my head. I often asked God, "Why me and why this? Please give me something else, I am ready to suffer that, but not this!" I used to marvel at a perfectly normal human activity - breathing! "How can people breathe normally? How can I not do that?"

Asthma is simply the worst disease according to me, because it threatens to hit the very existence of human beings, which is breathing. We breathe, so we are, When you cannot breathe, how can you live?.All the body parts are paralysed as the chest is clogged. Asthma kills....yes, it does.

I skipped school for days,weeks together and spent many a sleepless night. Even a walk to the rest room had to be undertaken with a lot of effort, holding on to walls and doors whilst moving like a tortoise. Many a time, I almost gave up and felt like running to the terrace and jumping off! It also resulted in a strange phenomenon - being with people but feeling lonely. During day time, when all the other members of the family were away at office or school, I would again be alone with only books for company.

Medicine did nothing to further the cure - it would work for a few days and stop afterwards. I had to dunk in further tablets. Steroids, vitamins, anti inflammants and what not. I have popped in so many tablets in my life for asthma, that it is a miracle I still have my liver intact! The tablets would take effect after 6-8 hours of intake and they would have effects for a day or so at the max. Many a time they would not have any effect since the body would become immune to the drug.

I have seen countless doctors, tried Allopathy, Homeopathy... been on diets which one stream of medicine prescribed, which sometimes would be contrary to the other. No tomato, dairy, cold stuff, no this, no that, only boiled water.... The list was endless. The steroids would have a lot of side effects - fever, headache and depression. I used to be administered injection after injection along with the IV drips. The breathing would be easy for about a week after which I had to go and get another dose of injections and drips again. I was injected so many times and became so swollen, that my veins were not visible to the nurses. This was really costly too and after a point of time, my parents decided to give it up. It happened one day when at the hospital, I had a bout of fits, swooned and fell down and hurt my head after being administered a IV drip.

Life used to be like that. Fear of the next attack. Fear of food. Weather. Dust. Pollution. Psychological situations. Just plain fear.

When I was suffering, many people who had visited my house would tell so many things:

"Why can't you breathe?"

"Oh you can't eat this is it?"

"At this age if you are like this, what will happen when you grow up?"

"Get up, get up and walk!"

"Why do you keep sitting all the time - Don't you feel caged?"

"Try to go to the abroad and get a cure."

"I have never seen a younger patient."

Many of these questions have no answers. I was not able to breathe because I just could not. I was not able to eat certain things because they would immediately hit me. Yes, I could understand that some people were genuinely sympathetic but, they cannot do anything beyond that. Still I would welcome their sympathy in my heart. If someone was down and I was perfect, I would do that too, isn't it?

Thankfully, my family did not give up on me. Yes, at times, they would get frustrated, but it is perfectly understandable - it is tough to have a young patient at your home all the time! So, in order to avoid the visitors, I would take my chair, go and sit in another room away from their gaze Since I could not speak, books and newspapers were my only company. They still are - My school till class ten was so unbothered about attendance, which worked out to my advantage. There was a problem in classes 11 and now 12 and my father was asked to give a written explanation as to why I was missing school.

In around 2022, I had a severe asthma attack. My breathing became increasingly difficult by the minute and all inhalers - Salubatomol, Asthalin and combinations of these failed to have any effect. When you have asthma, you try your best to let the air out - whether through your mouth or nose. But no matter what I tried, I just could not breathe at all. My eyes started shrinking, images started to blur and I thought it was the end of it all.. I was hospitalised and sent to the ICU and it was a while before I recovered. Well I have looked death in the face - and yes, it was black!

Today, as a precaution, I keep my medicines at every possible place - college, home, bag - so that I have some ammunition to fight an attack. A huge decrease in weight between 2020 to 2023 led to my using medicine multiple times daily, sometimes even after every meal. Recently after increasing some weight, asthma has become very manageable. Unless i'm under extreme stress, I am able to largely live without medicines.

Well now to the headline - what has my experience with asthma taught me? A lot, actually. I know what suffering is. It has made me someone which I would not otherwise have been. Wretched waiting periods for the next proper breath of air have taught me patience. I have an almost bottomless glass of patience.... I don't know if it is really good to have such monk-like patience or not, but I am now wired like that.

Once, after a point of time, I realised that I had no choice but to live like this,It is tough, real tough, but there is no other choice. You need to believe that you will fight, you will live. You just need to gather courage. There is no one who can help you. Can anyone suffer for me? Certainly not. It is all in your head and when you slip on the positive thought process, rewire it again. Anyway, I had no chance - Had I believed I could not overcome it, I would have not.

A side effect of asthma, - if I may call it so - has been the almost zilch presence of anger. I find it very tough to get angry and have been questioned many a time by people as to how I manage it. A couple of months back, at college, during a potentially flammable situation, an colleague had asked me as to how i could keep so calm? how i tell him? In short now I feel nothing, after past circumstances ,i can't understand jokes anymore,I forI was just being myself. Well, asthma made me angry at myself for such a long time that all my anger dissipated when I found that I could not do anything about it. It is sort of intrinsic to me. To be frank, I don't like that about me.

Anger sometimes contributes to building self esteem. My ten year old self tells me that I should get angry at people - "come on, shout", myself says! I can withstand a lot of things said about me, at times perhaps even shaming myself. Unfortunate? Perhaps. I tell myself - "well they are only that much!"

I can just flip and forgive people. In a minute. If someone dies something wrong to me and if they just apologize, I can immediately, almost immediately, forgive people. Asthma has tested the limits of my tolerance for too long, and I have come up trumps this far. Another side effect obviously has been that I am taken for granted and at times taken advantage of. I am trying to change this, one firm step at a time….!

At the end:

"Everyone is a slave to something"