When you can't breathe, you can't scream! - I

As I was waiting at the Bombay airport to catch a flight to Delhi , I noticed a frail old man sitting a row before me holding an inhaler in his hands and pumping medicine into his mouth. It was evident that he was an asthmatic and perhaps at an acute stage because you don't need so many pumps out of it at such short gasps. This sight brought memories of my battle with asthma some time back.

It was around the third week of June 1990. I was announced as the winner of the Raghava Chetty prize for mathematics for topping class seven at MCC HSS, Chetpet, Madras. Class eight had just commenced. The day of the prize distribution was nearing. When I woke up on the day of prize distribution, I could not breathe. It was like someone was pressing my chest and was preventing me from breathing. I had to resort to breathing through the mouth. I was shocked as it was something that had rarely happened before with such intensity. I skipped the award function and was taken to the doctor; prescribed medicine. Then the breathing problem start to become a routine affair.

Every other week I would get a bout of breathlessness. It became increasingly unbearable. I  spent most nights sleepless  sitting on a plastic chair with a night lamp for company. I would take a pillow and try to rest my head on it. But in a curved position, it made breathing even more difficult as my chest would get pressed. (Today, my back is almost permanently curved because of years and years of this). I would use two to three pillows so that my head would just fall upto the height of the neck, at the max. If my head went below, breathing would become even more difficult.. Many a time, I fell asleep around three or four am - in the wee hours of the morning, just out of sheer fatigue or the after effects of tablets which used to kick in only during very early mornings. Those days were the hardest for me, physically. I used to just sit and ponder like a melancholic businessman whose ships are lost at sea.

For years together. Myriad thoughts kept  ramming my head. I often asked God, "Why me and why this? Please give me something else, I am ready to suffer that, but not this!" I used to marvel at a perfectly normal human activity - breathing! "How can people breathe normally? How can I not do that?"

Asthma is simply the worst disease according to me, because it threatens to hit the very existence of human beings, which is breathing. We breathe, so we are,  When you cannot breathe, how can you live?. All the body parts are paralysed as the chest is clogged. Asthma kills....yes, it does.

I skipped school for days together and spent many a sleepless night. Even a walk to the rest room had to be undertaken with a lot of effort, holding on to walls and doors whilst moving like a tortoise. Many a time, I almost gave up and  felt like running to the terrace and jumping off! It also resulted in a strange phenomenon - being with people but feeling lonely. During day time, when all the other members of the family were away at office or school, I would again be alone with only books for company.  

Medicine did nothing to further the cure -  it would work for a few days and stop afterwards. I had to dunk in further tablets.  Steroids, vitamins, anti inflammants and what not. I have popped in so many tablets in my life for asthma,  that it is a miracle I still have my liver intact! The tablets would take effect after 6-8 hours of intake and they would have effects for a day or so at the max. Many a time they would not have any effect  since the body would become immune to the drug.

I have seen countless doctors, tried Allopathy, Homeopathy, Siddha, Ayurveda... been on diets which one stream of medicine prescribed, which sometimes would be contrary to the other. No tomato, dairy, cold stuff, no this, no that, only boiled water.... The list was endless. The steroids would have a lot of side effects -  fever, headache and weight gain. I then visited Santosh hospitals in Besant Nagar, Madras. I used to be administered injection after injection along with the IV drip. I gained so much weight that my neck was almost invisible. But it made me breathe. The breathing would be easy for about a week after which I had to go and get another dose of injections and drips again. I was injected so many times and grew so plump that my veins were not visible to the nurses. This was really costly too and after a point of time, my parents decided to give it up. It happened one day when at the hospital, I had a bout of fits, swooned and fell down and hurt my head after being administered a IV drip.

Then, on the advice of a neighbour, I tried the miraculous fish medicine at hyderabad. This was - and is -  being administered by the Goud family for years now. A secret medicine, smelling very much of asafoetida, if I recollect right, would be applied on the mouth of a live fish and rammed down the throat of the patient. Since the medicine was free, a lot of patients still converge at Hyderabad for three days. We had to stay overnight on the road. My father used to be with me. Then there was a strict diet for 45 days with more don'ts than dos. A minimum of three years was required at the least to show results as per the practitioners. I went in 1995, 1996 and 1997. Unfortunately, it did not work on me.

Life used to be like that. Fear of the next attack. Fear of food. Weather. Dust. Pollution. Psychological situations. Just plain fear.

When I was suffering, many people who had visited my house would tell so many things:

Why can't you breathe? 
Oh you can't eat this is it? 
At this age if you are like this, what will happen when you grow up? 
Get up, get up and walk! 
Why do you keep sitting all the time - Don't you feel caged?  
Try to go to the US and get a cure. 
I have never seen a younger patient.

Many of these questions have no answers. I was not able to breathe because I just could not. I was not able to eat certain things because they would immediately hit me. Yes, I could understand that some people were genuinely sympathetic but, they cannot do anything  beyond that. Still I would welcome their sympathy in my heart. If someone was down and I was perfect, I would do that too, isn't it?

Thankfully, my family did not give up on me. Yes, at times, they would get frustrated, but it is perfectly understandable -  it is tough to have a young patient at your home all the time! So, in order to avoid the visitors,  I would take my chair, go and sit in another room away from their gaze  Since I could not speak, books and newspapers were my only company. They still are - only that they have taken an electronic form! My school till class ten was so unbothered about attendance, which worked out to my advantage. There was a problem in classes 11 and 12 and my father was asked to give a written explanation as to why I was missing school.

For ten years till 1998-99, until a friend (God bless him and his family) referred a doctor to me who administered inhalers (medicine pumps), I had the worst days and nights of my life.Due to the introduction of inhalers, there was a sea change in my life. The inhaler administers the drug into the wind pipe directly instead of the tablet which works by mixing into your body. It this expands the wind pipe, making breathing easier. Further, the dosage of one puff of the pump is almost one hundredth of one tablet, making it much safe with lesser side effects. It was all fine. Or so, I thought. 

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