Have another snake oil pill. It’ll cure what ails you.
As a sophomore in high school I had complained about having shortness of breath & chest tightness. Breathing felt like a chore. I would take a deep breath but it never quite felt satisfying. I then went to a doctor who told me I had asthma & allergic rhinitis. I’d asked if it was possible to outgrow this condition. My doctor told that it was ‘doubtful’… and I believed him.
Running track that year was rough. I would take hits of my inhaler before and after every race (it didn’t really do much good). I went to the high school’s summer soccer camp before my junior year. However, I was a midfielder and my biggest strength was to constantly hustle up and down the field, trip up their offense and advance the ball to our forwards. I didn’t bother trying out that year because I felt my presence wouldn’t be of any use in my state of health.
My parents took steps to ease my symptoms, such as replacing the old carpet in my room with linoleum (for which I’m still grateful for) and purchased a dehumidifier and air purifier. These were good safeguards for symptoms popping up at home… but the conditions of the world are slightly harder to control. I’d traveled to Scotland in ’06. It was absolutely lovely there, however it was much colder than anticipated and our accommodations were in a very old hotel. My labored breathing at night kept my brother awake. “Just breathe normally,” he’d tell me. “I can’t,” I replied.
One night lying in bed in the hotel I had particular trouble getting any air into or out of my lungs. My chest was concave and collapsed. I was in the middle of a severe asthma attack which set me off into a panic which could only have made things worse. My mom & brother moved me from my bed to a sofa and my brother ran for help. In those moments it would appear I was in pain and discomfort but I couldn’t really describe what it felt like. My mind had removed itself of my body’s situation and I simply watched it all unfold. “So this is really happening,” I thought to myself. Thankfully there was a doctor staying down the hall who was able to calm me and get me to control my breathing.
When I went away to college, I took matters into my own hands and practiced breathing exercises and ran at the school gym at every opportunity. That year I trained for and finished a 5K poker run on a chilly October morning. Just a couple weeks back I biked 5 miles to work, rode to a 5:00 ultimate Frisbee game which I played for two hours and pedaled the rest of the way home. I was able to do all of this without a rescue inhaler or a thought of my “disease”.
It should be the job of doctors to “educate, empower, and motivate patients to take responsibility for their own health” as is the mantra of so-called “quack medicine”. It makes perfectly good business sense in the eyes of the western medical establishment to keep me exactly the way I was. I would be hooked for life into buying “medicine” and I would pay for another doctor’s visit every time I needed a refill. No doctor ever told me there were measures I could take to heal myself. This is a cycle that is perpetuated in far worse circumstances than mine. Every day people walk into a doctor’s office and look to some of the most highly trained professionals in our country for healing and advice. They are instead handed a thin slip of paper with an illegible signature and an empty promise that it will help ease their pain.
I keep my last prescription bottle that expired in ‘08 on the mantle in my room to remind me that I can overcome anything… if I’m willing to fight through the pain. On that little orange bottle there is an inscription that I find to be very meaningful and a summation of all my thoughts on the subject.
It reads, “THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING AT KMART”.
ways. What has happened since then? We have school zone speed limits. We have blinking yellow signs with a graphic of silhouette children crossing the street. We have crossing guards. We have speed carts set up by police to let us know how fast we’re going. One thing you don’t see is… kids crossing the street.
