Slice of Chaotic Life

Two years ago, if memory serves, I consulted a lung specialist and got this asthma inhaler, brand name Airomir (active drug salbutamol). It’s a kind of dust or fine powder that I breathe in as deeply as I can, then hold my breath for a while before slowly breathing out. It is supposed to keep the bronchi open. In exercise asthma, there are the twin problems of increased mucus and constriction of the muscles around the bronchi. Airomir keeps the muscles from squeezing together the airways. I don’t think it has any effect on the increased mucus production, but that alone should not be much of a problem.

On Wednesday, I got a “mini-attack” a couple days before the stress test of the heart. At the time, the stress test of the mind was at its height, as I was fighting the programming from my early childhood that told me that I would die if I ever exerted myself. It was something I had come to believe deeply before I was old enough to understand what was going on. And not believe in a theoretical sense, the way most people believe in a religion: I had felt the struggle to breathe many, many times in my early childhood. Those years were like sleeping with your bed standing at the edge of a bottomless chasm. If I dreamed of running, I might or might not survive the night. (Obviously I did survive, or I would not be here to write about it. Not every kid with asthma did, not back then at least.)

Anyway, I used the Airomir inhaler on Wednesday a couple hours before the stress test, and it went well enough. We even tested my lung function after the stress test and it was normal for my age, which it has never been before. So it seemed like a very good thing. I did not use it yesterday, but today I took a puff right after I had come home and checked my pulse.

My pulse was around average, so I was looking forward to finally jogging some more. Yesterday I had to walk most of the way and only jog a little, because my bronchi started to act up when I jogged enough to get a little winded. Today I would not have that problem. What could possibly go wrong? (You know when I say that, something did.)

I drank a cup or so of water and probiotic milk, put on a light shirt and my new running shoes, and set off. Airomir is supposed to be taken about 15 minutes before exercise, ideally, although it can also be taken after symptoms appear. It is more effective to use it beforehand, though, and you don’t really want asthma symptoms if you can avoid them. Now it only took a couple minutes or so before I went outside, but I walked at a normal speed for the first 1o minutes or so, as planned. At this point I was reaching the edge of the town proper, taking a road out along the river. I was looking forward to finally stretching my legs.

That was when my pulse started rising.

Not a full-scale tachycardia attack, like I’ve had four times earlier this spring. It was just that my pulse was faster than it should have been from just walking fast. Normally it is in the range 115-120 at this point, but now it rose to 125 and up toward 130. That is not really a problem, but it was unexpected. I did almost no jogging, and the pulse still increased. After half an hour it was constantly over 130 when walking at a comfortable speed, neither fast nor slow. I slowed down and the pulse did not continue to rise, but I did not get any serious jogging done at all. It was just a 70 minute stroll, really. But my legs felt as tired as if I had moved much faster, too. It was not just my heart. Weird.

Did the Airomir trigger this strangeness? My pulse had been perfectly normal before I started.

The only way to find out is to experiment with and without Airomir some more days. Hopefully there will be plenty of days yet to do so.

Fast pulse is listed as one of the more common side effects (more than 1% of users), but so is restlessness and nervousness, so I would suspect the three of them to be mentally induced side effects (nocebo). As it happens, I did not read the side effects until after I came home. Coughing is also listed, and I did that too, but not really more than I did yesterday. I am not really surprised that I would be coughing after inhaling powder, anyway. It is not something I would normally do.