Short of Breath

If I have to be honest--and as this is a blog, I'd be missing the point if I failed to blather about my personal life to the four corners of the world wide web--I really don't want to write here this evening. It isn't just that this has been a long, tiresome week, and I've been worrying about a friend who has had several mysterious and forbidding symptoms for several months now. Or, that I'm in the middle of an intense semester, and wish it was mid-December instead.

On top of everything else, I had to take my cat, Gremlin, to the S.P.C.A. today, after six months of futile searching for a home for him. I have had him since he was a kitten, and he has absolutely, without exception, been the most amazing pet I have ever had. I've been crying off and on all day today, feeling like I've betrayed an old friend, and yet I could see no other choice.

Because Jackson has asthma, and one of his more serious allergies is to the protein in cat saliva. Thus, making him extremely susceptible to severe asthmatic episodes by simply being too close to cat hair (that has, of course, been regularly bathed by its owner's feline tongue).

So, if I had to think about chronic diseases for this blog assignment (and it's hard, because I'm still weepy), I decided that asthma is, indirectly, most definitely affecting me right now, and my emotional health. Call it trite, but it seems unfair to me that a chronic disease, like asthma, can cause such disruptions in the lives of so many women, besides myself. It can range from the very "petty" (no pun intended), like being forced to give up a beloved cat or dog, to the very severe, like being hospitalized (as my son has been on three different occasions).

According to the CDC (2002), women are not only negatively affected by this disease, but to a much greater degree than men. They are hospitalized more, they seek medical treatment more often for it, and they even die at greater rates in this country, than do men with asthma (CDC, 2002).

But, it affects them in other ways as well. According to the findings of a survey, Women and Asthma in America (Medscape, 2006), many women reported that their loved ones were very concerned or worried about their (the women's) asthma, that they were forced to cancel social events or participate in them, and that their asthma even affected their sex lives.

I can believe it. I see how Jackson has to make concessions for his illness (Gremlin was his buddy, too), in how he is much more easily physically stressed than his peers, even though his asthma is supposedly under good control. I hope he is not limited as he grows up, but it seems to me that as more and more Americans are diagnosed with this disease, due to a variety of causes, (but most glaringly, diet and environment) we are going to see an increase in cases which are hard to control, and even the numbers of attributable deaths.

As it seems women already bear more than half the burden for adult cases of asthma in this country (CDC, 2002), that prospect does not bode well for women's health.


Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. (2002). Asthma: A heavy burden for women. Retrieved on November 8, 2008 from http://www.cdc.gov/women/newsltr/02fall.htm

Medscape. (2006). Asthma may be undermanaged in a majority of women. Retrieved on November 8, 2008 from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/411139