Jennifer’s mother is a hospital chaplain, and she tells me that she has seen several people with minor cases of asthma who use their asthma to get attention; it’s sort of like those people, I suppose, who claim that every headache that they have is a migraine headache, when, in fact, all they have are simple vascular or tension headaches.

I guess I can see it. I admit that I’m not above using my asthma as a convenient excuse to play hooky from work every now and then (though I haven’t since I left the Labor Relations department at the University six months ago); and when I was in school, I even (and this will come as a shock to many readers, I know) used it as an excuse to play hooky then as well.

But apparently there are people who take it to an extreme of some sort. Some people feel lonely and use their asthma as an excuse to go to the hospital and get some extra attention. I personally have never done that; I hate going to the hospital and getting the breathing treatments and the shots and the new medications. The other night at the emergency room, I was given an injection of cortisone through a needle that I’m sure was designed by the Defense Department; nothing with a bore that large is meant to be inserted into the human body, not even into the hip (my apologies to every single woman out there who has undergone an amniocentesis examination; I know that the needle used for that exam has a bore wide enough to drive a truck through, and I know that men are wimps when it comes to pain compared to women who always have the "natural childbirth" ace to hold over us). And cortisone itself is not a pretty drug; sure it helps with the asthma but the side effects of long use — osteoporosis, liver and kidney damage, and so on — are just not pretty. In high school, I was on daily maintenance doses of Prednisone, and the acne that it gave me was bad enough to get me the nickname, "Oil Face". Even now, when I take Prednisone, I still get pretty bad acne.

I had my very first asthma attack when I was less than a year old, my mother tells me; all I know is that asthma has been a part of my life for as far back as I can remember. I spent a lot of time at the hospital when I was young, including six weeks at Stanford Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto; even though I was four or five years old at the time, I still have vivid memories of that stay.

The first doctor I remember seeing regularly for my asthma was a Japanese man who looked about thirty even though he was pushing fifty at the time (I think). He frequently encouraged me, when I was a kid, to take up yoga or meditation, his idea being that relaxation, discipline, and overall goood health were probably the best approaches to asthma control, much more so than medication. I wish now that I had taken him up on his advice and suggestions when I was much younger. I’m sure my asthma would be under much better control now than it is. When this doctor passed away a few years ago, I confess that I nearly cried.

When I was in college, dealing with asthma was easy; there were lots of doctors on the campus in the Student Health Center, and the student insurance covered everything. Right after I got out of college I wound up without a job and no way of paying for my medical expenses. For years I dealt with my asthma by using over-the-counter inhalers and no maintenance medications whatsoever. I’m pretty sure that I did my lungs a good deal of damage during that period of time. I was very fortunate to find a physician who was willing to treat me at greatly reduced rates and give me free samples of the medication I needed to treat my asthma. When I finally got a job which had medical insurance, I continued going to the same doctor, though I paid full rates of course.

Anyway, the point is this: I really hate having asthma.

Asthma — especially the degree of asthma that I have — is a pretty high-maintenance disease. Between my new antibiotics and steroids, in addition to my regular maintenance medications, I counted a total of eleven pills that I have to take twice a day.

That sucks.

My biggest worry right now is how I’m going to take care of my asthma while I’m on the road in Europe in May. I’ve posted my concerns to a couple of different on-line forums, and talked to my doctor’s head nurse. I think it will be okay, but so much for traveling light. With all of my pills and inhalers, my backpack is going to be full of lots of stuff.

With asthma, my lungs take every opportunity available to turn any illness into bronchitis. A cold turns into bronchitis. So does the flu. Or a mild respiratory infection of any sort. Stomach flu. Athlete’s foot. All of them turn into bronchitis, I swear.

So here I sit, working from home today, having convinced my boss that I don’t need to go to Portland this week, with bronchitis and feeling very whiney.

So. Are there really people in the world who use their asthma for attention, or who even fake it to get attention? Seems like there are. And I confess that I just don’t understand it. All in all, I much prefer people paying attention to me because I’m a fun, interesting, charming person (how could I possibly be otherwise?) than because I happen to be unable to breathe from time to time.

Ah, well. Breathing is overrated anyway.

Until the next time I have a chance to play with the new "save entry as draft" feature of the on-line journal maintenance program I’ve written, I remain…

Addendum, three hours later: I have added the ability to add "widgets" to each of these journal entries. The "Jabberwock Inn" image and the car images to the right are examples of widgets, snippets of HTML code which are associated with this journal entry in the same database which tracks all of the entries. The next step is a web-based interface for creating widgets and associating them with journal entries.