How to Beat Asthma
DENVER, Colorado—I had my first asthma attack in 10 years while working on this story about asthma.
The day had been a grind. I flew to Denver early on a March morning, hoping to give myself a full day to acclimate to the air before I did some jogging and hiking the next day. From the moment I touched down and took a Lyft away from the Denver airport, that unlucky hellhorse, the afternoon was a blur of reporting. At the end of the day, I found some comfort in a bar with some pretty good draught beers and ahi tuna guacamole. Only, the guacamole I ate turned out to be the version with crabmeat. I’m very allergic to crabmeat.
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The reaction started mildly enough: a tingling about the lips, itchy arms, and some slightly constricted nasal airways. Nothing a good dose of Benadryl couldn’t fix. But on the way to the drug store, something deeper kicked in. The coughs to clear my throat became involuntary and more violent, with the whistling rattle of a wheeze. Each breath felt a little less sufficient than the last, and the effort to inhale began to consume me. The recognition of my old nemesis set in, along with that familiar animal panic. I’m having an attack.
I’d come to the Mile High City in search not of situational irony, but of new ways to fight the lung disease that affects me and almost 25 million other Americans, a cohort that has only grown over the past few years. Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases in the country, and although it rarely kills on its own, it regularly debilitates people, impairs quality of life, and can lead to a lifetime of emergency-room visits and dangerous comorbidities that themselves shorten lives.
Most people with asthma have at least one attack per, around $60 billion for the country, and together with COPD it’s most costly diseases in total. Severe asthma sufferers belong to what we are calling the “,” or the five percent of Americans responsible for half of all the country’s health-care costs.
