The third week in September is notoriously considered peak week here in Massachusetts, a term I had never heard before this year. It’s the week that asthma and allergies require the most hospitalization. And to my surprise, I became one of those statistics, landing myself in the hospital right during the middle of peak week.
After about 4 weeks of dealing with a chronic cough, post-nasal drip and fatigue, my cough progressed into recurrent asthma attacks resulting in a hospitalization with a heavy (and continued) dose of steroids. I’m finally on the mend, have most of my energy back and am feeling grateful that I have access to medicine yielding this experience an inconvenience rather than a death sentence.
I haven’t suffered from allergies in about 12 years, but things change. It is most likely why I didn’t suspect allergies to be the culprit until it was a little too late. I pushed a little too far for a little too long. It scared me, to say the least. I usually take pride in my health and this experience definitely brought me to a point of surrender and vulnerability that I haven’t quite experienced before. My lungs felt like they were failing me and until you can’t breathe, it’s hard to understand how much of a blessing sufficient airflow is. I was left feeling grateful, more than anything.
From what I understand, there is a threshold to asthma. Our lungs can only tolerate and filter so much until our body goes into overdrive. During peak week allergies are at a season high, putting those with asthma at an increased risk. I don’t know fully what triggered my attacks yet, but I suspect the main culprit will be ragweed. As to the whole threshold theory, I am curious what other environmental irritants I could potentially be breathing in on a day to day basis. Dust, air quality concerns, fragrances, etc.? Pollen and air pollution are not things I can control, but it has definitely left me thinking of the things I maybe could.
I originally went down the natural home path to avoid unnecessary exposure to chemicals (don’t we get enough as is?) and to lighten the toxic load of my surroundings— but intuitively I feel like it makes sense that chemicals we breathe would cause our lungs to become irritated and inflamed over time, making it more likely that seasonal allergies would be the tipping point. Since the hospital stay, I have done a bit of minimizing (bye-bye dust) and removed the final remaining store-bought cleaners from my cabinets. It leaves me feeling like I am doing what I can in a highly uncontrollable world. Here’s a few final thoughts…
+ Introduce plants to filter air quality
Plants filter the air, removing toxins that typically get released from wall paint, plastics, furniture, etc.
+ Use non-toxic cleaners
Consider swapping out store-bought cleaners for homemade ones with non-toxic ingredients.
+ Less things = less dust
Simply put.
I am clearly not a pulmonologist or an allergist, but I think removing as many environmental irritants as possible (aka what we breathe in) just makes sense to me. I obviously have more to discover in relation to my breathing, but feel like I am at least on the right path towards discovery now.
