Calm, now. But an hour ago I truly thought I might be about to die.
Woke up about 3am completely unable to breathe.
Must have had a sudden onset attack of asthma in my sleep.
When you wake up (if you wake up) during an attack like that, it takes a few seconds to realise what's going on.
I sat on the side of the bed and used my inhaler - then realised that my lungs had literally stopped working - air was going in but not actually ventilating my body.
PANIC
My asthma can be so acute that a few years ago I bought my own nebuliser machine.
It's a hideous array of tubes and a mask and lots of noise that I loathe deeply.
But this morning I'm convinced it saved my life.
I ran as fast as I could downstairs having not taken in any air for about a minute and a half and I was actually starting to black out - flowers full of reds and purples were exploding behind my eyes and I had a horrid coppery taste in my mouth.
It was a crisis moment and I thought this was the dreaded "SOFA" incident.
Ha! Sofa sounds like a completely harmless acronym for something soft and cuddly.
But it means Sudden Onset Fatal Attack.
It's the thing all chronic asthma sufferers have at the back of their minds pretty much all the time.
It can come from nowhere and unless you're within striking range of emergency treatment, it does what it says it will do incredibly swiftly.
Anyway, I managed to set up the machine and started breathing in the ampoules.
But it felt like it wasn't working. So REAL PANIC set in.
I know that in some circumstances if you don't catch the attack in time, the nebuliser is ineffective and you need injections of fast-acting steroids straight into your blood stream - in a deep vein. It hurts. Things can get much worse than that and you can end up in an ICU. Or, if it all turns to shit for you and it's just not your lucky day, in the morgue.
Hey-ho!
Anyway, self-evidently it WAS working and slowly I started to breathe again.
That was about an hour ago now and the relief of getting through this is almost overwhelming.
I've been sitting here in stunned silence and I think in a mild state of shock for what felt like an age, so I decided I'd type it all up just to be able to read it back in the cold light of day, as it were.
Clearly some things have to change in my life.
I may not be near this nebuliser next time - and if that were to happen, I have no doubt that an attack as severe as this would kill me.
I'm just so fucking lucky that I had it, and the prescription, handy and ready to go.
I've had to call an ambulance out to my home before - but the attack wasn't anywhere near as total as this one and I know for a stone cold fact that by the time it took to get here, it would have been too late.
The dawn is breaking now and it's a brilliant burnt-orange, pink and red sunrise against a dark lilac sky.
Red sky at morning is supposed to be bad, isn't it?
Looks pretty fucking wonderful to me.
x
