#yall better treat kids as gently and kindly as humanly possible

[musherum]

long post -/ cael talks about her new asthma medication and recent Realizations

honestly? im noticing a lot of improvement since i started the new medication. its a corticosteroid, which is a kind of drug that is exclusively for treating constrictive asthma. there are two different types of asthma, see: theres inflammatory, which responds well to treatment with ventalin, the most common inhaler which provides immediate, “emergency” relief when you have an attack of inflammatory asthma, and theres constrictive, which doesnt respond to it at all. this was the “missing link” i was looking for. i didnt know about the medication requirements for that form of asthma until a few days ago when i had a major attack of constrictive asthma.

it.... took me a lot to finally say to my mum “i need to go to a doctor. i am having a lot of trouble breathing, and i cannot function. i know this cannot be normal.” it took even more, though, to say to her that i needed to stay home that day, and miss the GED class im taking - even though the day before was the first session. my mom has screamed at me and called me a failure and an idiot before, when she caught me skipping school because of depression and fatigue. that was a very very big step for me, facing my fear of my mom yelling at me again. but i could not focus on anything, not with how laboured my breathing was. it was the frustration of not being able to sleep that finally pushed me over the edge - while i was up all night with my then untreated and untreatable asthma attack, i 

i told her my symptoms, and then explained to her my, uh, “theory” that i had a form of asthma that didnt respond to ventalin. i got the name wrong (i mixed up constrictive and inflammatory), but otherwise, i got it entirely correct. i was so scared that she might brush me off, like what had happened before with so many people when i was younger. it had even happened with other doctors. but, fortunatley, she quickly agreed with me that it appears i need a corticosteroid as well as my ventalin to treat my symptoms.

i didnt know, before very recently, that ventalin is exclusively for inflammatory asthma, or that constrictive asthma requires cordicosteroids to treat. all along, i thought i was just being lazy, or dumb, or panicking, or lying, or a that i just didnt care. because people have said things like this to me. all throughout my life. i would say, “i cannot breathe,” and they would say, “take your emergency (ventalin) puffer.” so i would. and when i said i still didnt feel better, after i took my ventalin puffer in front of them, they stopped believing it could be asthma. older people, the ones who were supposed to take care of kids when theyre hurting, were the MOST dissmissive of my complaints. because they thought they knew everything about what asthma was. better than a kid who had it.

i thought that whatever it was, it couldnt be asthma, because so many older people told me so. no one ever told me that constrictory asthma needed a different additional medication. no one told me that i needed it. everyone said that asthma could just be treated with a ventalin inhaler, period, and that if i was so out of breath, i should just use mine. and i did. and itd didnt work. so i figured... i must not have asthma. because surely an adult knows better than i do, right?

as i grew up, my memories faded as memories do - but none so much as that of the visit to the doctors when i was first diagnosed. i can remember only a precious handful of details now; a diagram that depicted the inside of the lungs, shown with one having its air-tubes contracted tightly, and the other clogged up with mucus. i forgot about it because i was full of self loathing, i feel like, at least in part - its much harder to control your emotions when you dont have enough oxygen to normally power your brain, and the bullying i withstood, while not violent, was very frequent. i was very much not a “popular kid,” ill leave it there. a lot of people hated me. and a lot of people only pretended to like me, and i wasnt able to tell they were laughing at me. when you have shit like that on your mind constantly, and youre oxygen starved??? you tend to be a little, uh, distracted. im not surprised that i dont remember it well. but i wish i did. all i know for sure is that at the end of the day, i had a ventalin puffer, and that was it. i think there may have been a misunderstanding - when the doctor said that the cortisol (the most common, brand-name corticosteroid) is for long-term relief and the ventalin is for emergencies, my mom might have thought something along the lines of, “my child had an asthma attack, and it was an emergency. therefore ventalin is what we need, not cortisol.” but again, i dont know that for sure, and i dont want to throw anyone under the bus. it may have been that, or it may not have been. but i feel that my mom likely wouldnt remember if i asked her - taking ME to a doctors appointment wouldnt rank very high on her “important life moments” list, i suspect.

and so as i grew up, again, i had ventalin, but i very rarely remember having cortisol around, let alone taking it. uh, sorry i mean, corticosteroids. anyway, um... i think i was depressed then, even as a kid. my mom did not impress the importance of the medicine on me - she said it wasnt a that big a deal, that i only need to take it “sometimes.” and so when i ran out, i figured i didnt have to rush to tell her. and, of course, i didnt have the energy to take it every day - couldnt breath. in fact, because it required me to wash my mouth out through after taking it every morning and night, it was significantly more difficult to take the medicine that treated my constrictive asthma. and again, i did not have energy to let me do what i knew i was supposed to. and i did not know that just taking the corticosteroid regularly would help me get my energy back, because no one ever told me that my energy had... WENT anywhere. they didnt mention it being a part of the disease, so i assumed to was unrelated. i didnt know the science behind it back then, i was a little kid! and so it was that every time i had a flair-up, people kept telling me to use my ventalin inhaler, the one thats for “emergencies,” if i really felt so bad. and so.... i would. and the ventalin would not ease my constricted lungs, because its intended for inflammation. and when i tried to tell them it wasnt working, people would start telling me it wasnt asthma, and that it had to be something else - something that i was fucking up. and i believed them. i believed what they told me. because i thought that adults were supposed to be smart, and know more than kids, and that they were supposed to protect me when i said i was hurting. i thought they were supposed to help children when theyre hurting. and so all along, i believed them, cause why would they lie to me? they must know what theyre talking about. adults know more than kids, they never shut up about it, i probably thought. and... so i started to really internalize the idea that it was my fault. that i was always so tired, and forgetful, and weak, and exhausted, and out of breath, and bad at talking, and bad at concentrating, and bad in school, and bad at everything... because i was just a bad person. i even thought it was my fault that my hands wouldnt stop shaking - no matter how much i drew. my lines were always crooked and bent. so because i never knew that cortisol was the medicine i needed the most, i was never ABLE to stop my hands from shaking, no matter how hard i tried and how much i practiced drawing. so i assumed i was just a naturally shitty artist, and began to resign myself to a life of never being able to create something beautiful. no matter how much i practiced drawing.

all of it was because of my constrictive asthma - either because of too little air being able to penetrate my lungs and oxygenate my body and bloodstream, or because of the sharp, sudden and literally dizzying rips of air that i had to suck in just to breath at all.

all these years of hating myself have been perpetuated so needlessly, all because people assumed they knew better than a kid. even when the kid tells you “he” (really she, im talking about me as a kid after all) has a disease and that “he” (again, she) cant breathe and that “he” (SHE) has tried what you are suggesting and it does ever work. even if that kid is literally telling them, “it is my disease that is causing this.”

because people brushed me off, and put me down, even when i was telling them that i couldnt breath. even when i tried to explain to them that i felt like i was being slowly suffocated, by an invisble hand squeezing the air out of my chest. because thats what it DOES feel like.

...fuck, man. that was fucked up.