Marathon finisher certificates

This page is having a slideshow that uses Javascript. Your browser either doesn't support Javascript or you have it turned off. To see this page as it is meant to appear please use a Javascript enabled browser.

O2 sats and asthma attacks revisited

After 9 years of blogging about life with severe asthma, I still get a lot of traffic from people searching the web for specific information about O2 saturation and how ...

The evil candy

(The Prednisone Molecule) Thanks everyone for checking up on me. I'm fine! ( well,... almost) I've been out of the hospital for 5 days now, and ...

Im an A hole when Im sick

Most people will tell you Im one of the sweetest, most caring people you'll ever meet. But make no mistake, when Im recovering from a bad asthma exacerbation, ...

Play that Bass

Music is food for the soul and therapy for whatever ails you, and lung disease is no exception. Listening to music and learning to play an instrument has been ...

What's up with the lung transplant eval?

Ive been posting fairly frequently, either here or on my Facebook page, about what's been going on with my asthma treatment in the conventional sense, but a lot of people ...

10 miles and a blister .......Life is good

Yee Haaaaaaaaaah ---Got my first battle scar. Racked up a little more than 10 miles today and got my very first blister. Yup, on the ...

My 133rd hospitalization for asthma

My 133rd hospitalization occurred on 10-9-2017. The trigger wasn't the usual environmental allergies or resp infection, this time it was smoke from wildfires that have been devastating portions of northern ...

12 years

The many faces of this blog over this past 12 years........

Cmon....Thank a Nurse, Thank an RT

As I was mentioning to AsthmaMom, the first rule of etiquette for an asthmatic who has just survived another bad flare and hospital stay, is to thank those who ...

Treatment overload

Yes, another update about treatment options. Things seem to be changing at a lightening pace now and it's making my head explode. Too much for an over-thinker like me to ...

The wonderful side effects of frequent asthma flares

Think a severe asthma exacerbation only effects your lungs? Check out the photos below. Each photo was taken appx 2-3 weeks after being discharged from the hospital after a serious ...

And so it begins....Dupilumab

After waiting nearly 17 months with one setback after another and texting a friend saying "I'll believe it the day the drug is actually inside my body" ...

You're worthy

What is it with chronic severe asthma, self esteem, self doubt or self worthiness? Why do we tend to hide or downplay our disease or the severity of our ...

Macrolide therapy

This past week I started on yet another experimental therapy. This time it's long- term Macrolide therapy using Azithromycin. As an add-on therapy, recent studies indicate that the long term use ...

The not so glamorous side of being a severely asthmatic marathon walker

Yeah, I made it to Boston , Ive walked the Rome and Portland marathons a couple times, and yeah Ive been written up in lots of walk magazines and ...

My asthma has changed again

I'm not talking about the disease itself, I still have the classic text book definition of asthma, maybe even to a greater degree than many. What I'm referring to is ...

Exercise like your life depends on it

Everyone knows how important daily exercise is for maintaining good health, but I believe this is even more true when you suffer from a chronic breathing disorder such as ...

I'm phenotyped

Thanks to the efforts of the SARP researchers and the new era of severe asthma phenotyping, my particular flavor of the disease has finally been described. Drum roll please..................... It's called ...

Not just Asthma, Severe Asthma!

Not to downplay the heartache and suffering that people with milder forms of asthma have to sometimes contend with; obviously it's a big deal when you can't breath, but the ...

The A word

Im talking about the other A word.... ANXIETY As a Respiratory Therapist and a lifelong asthmatic, I know all too well that anxiety and breathlessness usually go hand in hand. ...

Steve - 9, Asthma---a big fat ZERO!

This might sound corny, but I feel like Ive just been reborn. On Oct 5th I finished my 9th marathon at the Portland Marathon. If you've been reading my updates, this ...

Tour De Badass YVR

"Badassmatic (adj.): Person with asthma better defined by badassery. Possesses insatiable desire for growth, change and adventure." ( Brought to you courtesy of Kerri Mac Kay)(Part 1 of 8 clips) ***For ...

Recovering from a bad asthma flare

A lot of attention is focused on what goes on during a severe asthma exacerbation, but very little about what occurs after. What a lot of people ( and ...

The Recovery phases of a severe asthma exacerbation

Suffice it to say, I wasn't exactly a happy camper when I wrote that last post about a recent hospitalization... I apologize for that. At the time, I was ...

Did you bring a note ?

Back in the old days when you got sick and ended up in the hospital, it was probably because your primary care doctor put you there. ...

Opiates and Lung disease

No longer just reserved for severe pain control or to relieve end of life suffering, today a growing number of people with severe lung disease are using opiate ...

Do you know when it's time to go in?

The idea for this post came to me during the middle a recent severe exacerbation. Actually, it was the same exacerbation that put me in the hospital for 12 ...

What's it like to be intubated for asthma?

The search term "Intubation" comes up fairly often on my blog's traffic logs, so I thought I take a moment to write about it. Lord knows I've had my share ...

When did my Asthma become COPD?

Im a Respiratory Therapist who's been in the field a long time, but I was a quite taken aback when my local Pulmonologist blurred out these sobering words... "Your COPD", ...

Air-Trapping

Ive written about this before, but this is such an important an misunderstood topic; one that effects most chronic lungers and causes more suffering than any other respiratory symptom, that ...