Let's talk about breathing, or rather, being unable to breathe.

I know it’s hard to imagine this little badass with any kind of weakness.

When I was very young I used to wake up in the middle of the night, unable to pull air past my throat and into my lungs.

I made a horrible wheezing sound. Like my airway had shrunk to the size of a pin. Always, I would look toward my doorway and see my mom striding from her room, her nightgown flowing against the black doorway. It’s a vivid memory. She would pull me out of bed, bring me into the bathroom, turn all of the taps on hot, and shut the door. She’d sit with me until it was done. As I got older I didn’t happen as much.

I used to get bad coughs when I got colds. My mom always said that if the cold went to my lungs, I would have a harder time. I’d often need steroids to get me over it.

When I was sixteen I had another nighttime attack. (I know now that these are called laryngospasms.) I remember it because for the first time, my mom didn’t come. I still glanced toward the doorway, like I had always done. It was the first one in many, many years. I’m sure she was no longer attuned to every noise from our rooms like she had been when we were very small. After about 90 seconds, it stopped. I didn’t get another one for years.

Yearbook photo (the original was in color) taken by my dad, actually.

When I was in junior high and high school, I ran track. I liked running. I was decent. Never one of the elite, but I got a few ribbons and medals. I always managed to make it to state. I remember running sprints with some teammates. Afterward, I couldn’t catch my breath. With every sprint it got worse. I would be hanging on to the chain-link fence, gasping for air, while they puffed lightly, walking back to the start line. I thought I was just ‘worse’ than them. In my young brain, some people were good at things, some people weren’t. It didn’t occur to me that we were training the same amount, and that there was obviously a vast physical difference. One or two of my coaches started asking if I had asthma.

I was diagnosed my senior year. I got an inhaler. I took it sparingly, but it did make a difference when I was running.

I’ve never been one to have bad allergies. At least when I lived in Louisiana. When I was twenty-one, I moved to England for a year. That spring, I started having coughing attacks. I couldn’t stop coughing walking up hills. I would occasionally cough in the middle of a conversation. It was embarrassing. I didn’t know how to stop it. One day, for the hell of it, I took a puff on my inhaler. The coughing stopped.

I can run without an inhaler now, but that sprint to the end always gets me.

I later moved to Chicago. The colder months and transitional seasons were difficult to me. Always the coughing. I would start and be unable to stop. Almost like it triggered a laryngospasm. (It didn’t, but the sound I would make between coughs was the same.) My inhaler helped.

I was doing a very physical play once in Chicago where I was onstage the entire time. I never left. There were a lot of fight scenes and the director really wanted me to yell these impassioned monologues. (I am not a natural yeller.) I would try. Finally, I started taking my inhaler. It helped. I remember talking to a woman backstage who was older than I was and had a son a few years younger than me. He also had asthma. She felt terrible when it was first diagnosed, because he also presented with coughing. Asthma is always characterized by wheezing. (In Hollywood, usually very dramatically and sometimes ending in fainting.) She had no idea that his coughing attacks were asthma attacks.

I never want to scuba dive. I never want to go to space. I don’t want to be anywhere oxygen isn’t surrounding me. I will do crazy things like this, but do not expect me to go underwater.

My asthma, fortunately is mild. Over the years, I’ve gotten in such good shape that I don’t even get an inhaler anymore. When I moved back down south, the laryngospasms surprised me again though. Usually in the spring. Sometimes I wake up enough before they get going. They always start with coughing. I’m not sure they’re connected, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

This morning I was talking to a friend on the phone. One of her daughters is having a tough time. She’s not sure if she’s sick or if it’s just allergies, but she’s been waking up in the middle of the night coughing. I decided to tell her this story, because no one ever associates coughing with asthma. And mine has always been worse this time of year. She said that they had been prescribed an inhaler for this, and it did seem to help, but she was afraid to give it to her in the middle of the night in case she gave her too much.

Obviously I’m not a doctor and have no medical knowledge, but I told her to keep it in mind in case it kept happening. Everything I described was ticking boxes for her.

Of course, I’m not hoping that the poor kid has asthma, but if she does, it could make a whole lot of things (like her future track and field career) a whole lot easier if she learns it early.

And I thought I might go ahead and throw this up. In case it helps someone else.