Asthma Attack
If it is the first asthma attack the sufferer may well feel a bit desperate, start-to panic, and try different positions for breathing in. This restless movement only makes him worse, for the extra muscular effort means that more air is needed and this is just what he cannot manage to provide. If he can calm himself he will be much better, but it is a terrifying situation to be in and this is a difficult thing to do. Slowly he gets more used to it and realizes he can stick it out, but hours may go by before he has much spare breath for moving around, or even for eating and drinking. Talking itself has to be rationed. Slowly the asthma eases off, and as it does so an attack of coughing may occur, bringing up some of that sticky mucus.
An attack like this will happen to anybody if he breathes into his lungs enough of a really irritant gas-like sulfur dioxide for instance. In the patient with asthma it is allergy that basically does it instead. What happens in allergy is that some tiny harmless little scrap of animal or vegetable matter, that has never previously caused any trouble at all, becomes capable of producing an intense irritable inflammatory reaction in a particular person. The fault lies not with the substance itself but with the person, i.e., he has become allergic to it.
Filed under: Asthma Attacks