I've had asthma since I was about 8 or 9. When I was nine I had a severe attack and ended up staying in the hospital for 3 days, complicated with a touch of pneumonia. Every now and then I get attacks, but not too often nor terribly bad attacks. I guess I'm lucky in that mine has been extremely mild the last 16 years. Nothing my Albuterol inhaler won't fix. When I got out of the hospital when I was 9, they had me use a Nebulizer, which was essentially an air compressor used to inhale a saline solution as a mist.
I had a horrible attack about 2 months ago when we had practice at our old lead guitarist's house (the first and last time there, for sure). He has two dogs and a cat, and though I'm not usually too affected by either one (my old roomate had two cats and I've had dogs for 10 years), I guess some combination or their breed or something in the house caused a horrible reaction. Our singer was having difficulties as well. I couldn't get home to my inhaler fast enough. When I got home I took a couple "hits" of my inhaler, which helped a little, but then later I started hyperventilating because I couldn't get enough oxygen and started panicking. I took a hot shower since I didn't want to use my inhaler too much (didn't want my heart to explode-like I needed more problems at that point
), but that didn't help. Instead of breathing into a paper bag for the hyperventilating (didn't have one), I stuck my head under the sheets to help slow my breathing. I think what made this attack worse than previous ones is that this was also a panic attack.
Sometimes at night my breathing gets a little labored from the dust in my bedroom. The window leaks a little, which stirs up the dust that Arizona is known for-if you've ever lived here, you know what I'm talking about!
I've never had any problems fainting when using my inhaler, but I've been using them so long it's second nature.
