The Search For Enlightenment

Another trip to Dr Paine tonight involved more soul searching than medical examination. The long battle against the dreaded cough seems to have been won, I haven’t had a coughing fit in more than a week now, but the wheezing that appeared, after the hack had gone, has come back with a vengeance in the last few days.

Life has been a bit stressful in the last few days, so it was really a matter of opening up and telling the Doc all about it. She was very sympathetic and understanding. She completely understood how the stress and the asthma, for that is what it is, are connected. Even the fact that my inhaler was running low contributed to the feeling of mini-panic when my lungs got tight.

So between us, we decided that I may well need the Ventolin for some time to come, and that a repeat prescription was the way forward. I am really rather disappointed. Not in the fact that I can order a new ‘puffer’ whenever I need one, but in the fact that I have had to finally admit that I suffer from asthma.

Maybe I’ve been in denial for all these years? My first, and by far most serious attack was way back in the early nineties, but I had convinced myself that it had been a one off, even when I had a less serious repeat every now and then.

Even now, I’m not giving in. I shall get out in the fresh air, do some lung bursting exercise on the bike, stretch out those bronchioles and see where that leaves Mr Asthma. Looking at it from a Buddhist perspective, I can see that it’s the sort sharp shock that I need to make those causes to lead to the effect I so want to see.