Does this apply to you?


My dad was diagnosed last year, and apparently loads of pensioners are suddenly suffering asthma after years of healthy life.

I'm a lifetime asthmatic, and I've had a few scares in the past with it - mostly when working in an office full of smokers in the 1980s.

I can never understand why people will be selfish to smoke if they know someone around them is an asthmatic.

I got asthma a couple of years ago, seemed to be workplace related. After changing my job, I've since had 1 attack in 3 years and no day-to-day symptoms.

The problems are:

1. Patients tend to rely on salbutamol/Ventolin for symptom relief. This means the inflammation in the airways isn't suppressed by steroid inhalers like they should be.
2. Patients often don't turn up for asthma reviews with their doctor which means you can't spot any deterioration and do something about it earlier.
3. Patients don't carry their salbutamol/Ventolin around with them for emergencies.

There is a wealth of literature and Asthma UK, yet not everyone signs up for it or reads it.

I think it’s the problem where you can’t see the damage being done, so there isn’t a problem. If my face started bleeding then I expect something would have been done about it. Asthma is an invisible, but very serious, condition. Someone did comment that I was looking grey once. The next day, I was on a nebuliser at my doctor’s surgery, and was off work for a week. I remember another woman on my section apologising for lighting up and making vain attempts to waft smoke away from me. I heard she had a stroke a couple of years after I left.

The real problem I had was the asthmatics who smoked. They were going around saying that they felt fine, and if they did why wasn’t I? One even had the nerve to say that the cigarettes made her asthma better. This seemed to carry more clout as an argument for doing nothing. Anyway, one of those smoking asthmatics ended up in hospital with Ventolin being given intravenously. I can’t say I was very sympathetic when she came back.

By the time I left, computerisation had started and smoking was banned - not for the health of the workers, but to keep the computers happy. Upside - I’ve not been in a smoking environment since, and the smoking ban means I can go out to pubs and restaurants. The downside is that my time in that office has likely reduced my lung capacity.


At one point this was everyone with asthma. Preventers weren’t as efficient as they are now, and quite frankly preventer or no, I was using the same quantity of Ventolin every day. What I am taking now means that I rarely take anything from my reliever, and I am on the lowest dose I can be on with it.


I do, and people know even what pocket it’s in. LIke I said, it’s not used very much. I actually feel odd if it’s not there.



I’ll tell you something - since I moved from Watford to Chelmsford, my asthma has not been nearly as bad as it was. I get a few weeks in the year when the farms are active - ploughing, harvesting which usually kicks up dust, but the rest of the time, it’s far less of a problem for me. I expect the pollution levels out here on the edge of a small city in the middle of an agricultural area is much better than being in the middle of a heaving town next to some major roads.

I remember similar stories at sixth form and uni where people were smoking. Somehow one person can be used to make a generalisation about a whole population.


I wasn't trying to make statements about everyone but there is a wealth of people out there who do not take their health very seriously and trivialise their asthma.


In all honesty, my asthma was far better when I was in Hampshire/Dorset than in Birmingham. I rarely needed to use steroid inhalers and my peak flows were great down south but move back up and I'm regular steroid inhalers.