yyyyep. take a gander at this... with particular attention to "Lung Age"...

so today I went to the doctor because I've been running quite a bit for the last two weeks and my exercise induced ashtma has been kicking in. I really didn't think it would be that big of a deal, figured I would just have to get an albuterol inhaler to puff on a little before I ran to prevent the symptoms before they kicked in. welp, I was wrong. very wrong.

let me give you a little run down. I am not a runner, not in the least. in jr high when we were forced to run a mile once a week, I was lucky enough to use a chronic ankle injury to get out of it. but as I grew older, I became envious of the people that could run a mile straight without stopping, then I became jealous of the people that could run 3 miles nonstop, and then my sister ran a marathon, and I became jealous of her. so I decided that I would build up to where I wanted to be. I knew it wasn't impossible, it was just a sucky process. I got a program from women's health magazine that built you up to running 30 minutes straight in six weeks with interval training; it requires you to run 4 days a week and do strength training two days a week, with one rest day per week. I started this about two weeks ago, and a week and a half into it, on a Wednesday, my asthma kicked in enough to stop me from finishing my intervals. not that I was full blown coughing and wheezing and on the ground, I just wasn't able to breath in deep enough to continue running without getting light-headed. that was when I decided I would take a break until I got an inhaler, and I made an appointment the following monday, which is today.

as standard procedure dictates, I took a spirometry test, which is where you take as deep a breath as you can, then blow all the air out of your lungs into this machine that measures things like full lung capacity. before I started, I thought to myself, "well this won't do any good, I have EXERCISE-INDUCED ashtma silly medical tech, not all-the-time asthma. this test won't show a thangg." well, I did this three times and the machine chose my best round. my best round only got 69% of what the full lung capacity should be for a non-smoking 22-year-old. that nasty little number puts my lungs in the same shape as a 75 year old.

"farealzz?!" well, as dr. patterson explained to me, if exercise-induced asthma flares go untreated consistantly this long (2 weeks), then it makes my lungs and airways constantly irritated, lowering my lung capacity and making each flare worst, until I either treat it or just stop the activity that's causing the flares. he said that if I had gone running yesterday, had a flare up, and had come in today, they would just give me a rescue inhaler to use whenever I went running. but because I waited two weeks to come in, they have to give me a stronger dosage of all the asthma treating stuff, which includes a pill that I have to take for 10 days, an inhaler to puff twice a day, and a rescue inhaler in case I still get a flare while on the daily inhaler.

moral of the story is: don't put off going to the doctor when you know you should. good news is that once my lungs are back in shape, all I have to do is maintain it by using an inhaler when I run. for now, if you hear me wheezing, don't be alarmed! I'm on the right track to nursing these babies back to 22-year-old health.