Biology Stories
  • Home
  • Stories
  • About

 Breathing Again

      My name is Nick, and I have a great Biology story!  It's a story of early childhood struggle and ultimate recovery and triumph over a chronic disease.

Picture
Do you see the little boy in that picture?  That's me about 20 years ago.  I looked pretty normal (as normal as things were in the early 90's) didn't I?  Actually I was quite sick with chronic asthma for nearly the first decade of my life.  Asthma is a common inflammatory disease of the airways.  It is thought to be a genetic and environmentally triggered disease.  My asthma made it difficult to do any sort of physical activity.  I had to constantly have an inhaler wherever I went.   For whichever reason, I had it bad.  My second home was the emergency room.  When I wasn't camping out there I was always sleeping near my parents.  It wasn't unusual for me to stop breathing in the middle of the night.  On top of that I suffered from childhood arthritis.  It wasn't exactly an ideal situation.  At  a time when I was at my worst we lived in Germany.  At the climax of my issues I had to be flown overnight to Washington D.C. to receive emergency treatment.  Every single doctor we saw over the years told us the same thing; that I would never be able to have an active lifestyle or participate in athletics without complications.  But after years of the same story, something changed, there was a turn for the better.

Нажмите здесь, чтобы отредактировать.

Picture
    Just like a Lifetime movie things started to change.  It seemed that all of the sudden I was better.  I no longer needed my inhaler.  I no longer needed the frequent visits to the hospital.  I didn't feel like I was drowning when I ran.  It's as though my body one day woke up and said: "that's enough."  I was able to do what I wanted. Ever since then I have been playing sports non-stop.  I don't have any problems with my lungs, it isn't hard to breath, and I feel great!  On top of everything I can count the number of times I've been sick sick over the last 15 years on one hand.  I don't know what changed.  I don't know if my immune system had seen so much that it has reached god-status or if I just got all my sickness out of my way in the first 10 years.  Who knows?!  All I know is the human body is a complicated thing, but I am grateful for my experiences with disease.  It is amazing to see the immune system and the body's innate ability to recover and improve.