Challenges to the Respiratory System

For those of you who have already been visited by snow, beware of the challenges extreme temperatures can mean for the respiratory system.  For those with asthma, extra caution is advised when you go outdoors on extremely cold days.  During a normal flu season, coughs and a host of other respiratory pronouncements frequently punctuate conversations and can become a cause for concern.  In extremely cold weather, some people wrestle with persistent respiratory ailments that hang on for weeks or months, only to return with a vengeance before the person is fully well. The air we breathe can make a person with asthma feel as though they are drowning.

One extremely frigid Missouri winter about 15 years ago, I recall hearing a low, wheezing sound just under the surface of Kit’s voice, followed by a cough.  Thinking it was just a seasonal cold, I did what my mother would have done.  I boiled water in a pot on the stove and added a big spoonful of Vick’s VapoRub ointment.  Kit leaned over the steaming pot with a towel draped over his head, breathing in the vapor and moisture.  Mother’s traditional aromatherapy worked well for me as a child, and it was soothing and relaxing for Kit’s nasal congestion as well.  

Then one night he felt like he couldn’t breathe and ended up in the ER.  His childhood asthma had returned. When Kit was five-years old and living in northern California, he had a severe asthmatic attack that landed him in the hospital, leading his mother to move the two of them overnight to Tucson, Arizona until he’d fully recuperated.  His asthma was then forgotten for more than half a century. What followed were physically active years when he ran cross country and was captain of the Oberlin wrestling team.  Then, decades later during that extremely frigid Missouri winter, his long dormant asthma kicked back in with a vengeance and he ended up in the ER.

Eager to learn more about asthma, I read up on the subject.  Respiratory problems, it seems, have been around forever and regularly affected characters in 19th century British novels, as well as the authors themselves. History is filled with references to asthma, bronchitis, catarrh, colds, coughs, earaches, hay fever, influenza, laryngitis, sinusitis, sore throats, tonsillitis, and whooping cough. Depending on the century and one’s geographic location, such ailments could be grave indeed.

I learned there are two kinds of coughs:  one when the membranes are hot and dry, the other moist with some wheezing and a feeling of choking. Alternative treatments include aromatherapy, homeopathy and naturopathy.  Doses of honey can soothe a dry and painful cough.  To make the honey more powerful, mash a little chopped raw onion or garlic with the honey first.  The onion helps open up the bronchial passages.  Dairy products, I’ve read, should be cut out, along with sugar, cakes and pastries to reduce the catarrh.

Catarrh.  Cataract.  A great flowing down.  Kit remembers his mother using this odd-sounding respiratory reference when he was a child, but it was new to me.  Then, in that coincidental way that we bump into language across time, I came across an essay by E.B. White entitled “The Summer Catarrh,” written for Harper’s Magazine in July 1938—one month before Kit was born.  

White was writing about Daniel Webster and a respiratory ailment the two shared in summer—the “Hay-fever” Webster called it.  E. B. White’s own childhood catarrhal problems were the result of drives in the countryside and horse dander.  A family doctor recommended that White’s mother douse his head in cold water every morning before breakfast.

I also remember reading Mornings on Horseback—historian David McCullough’s biography of Teddy Roosevelt in which he reveals Roosevelt’s childhood struggle with debilitating asthma while growing up in urban Manhattan.  Eventually he overcame his breathing problems through physical exercises that expanded his chest and by adopting a strenuous outdoor lifestyle in the American West that gave him his “cowboy” persona.

But asthma is like a bear that hibernates for years and them wakes up with a vengeance.  Thanksgiving week, Kit woke up having difficulty breathing and spent the day in the ER until his wheezing was under control and a strategy arrived at to deal with his asthma. He's not out of the woods yet, but hopefully he’ll get there. 

So, dear readers, be cautious this winter.  Like a bear groggy from months of hibernation, you may bundle up some cold morning feeling the need to breathe in mouthfuls of bracing air to reconnect with the world. You’ll look for signs of hope, and one mild winter day be surprised by joy when a flock of robins suddenly hops across the yard like a Broadway chorus line.

But beware.  Asthma, like winter has a way of hanging on. Take care should you find yourself wheezing and struggling to breathe.  The two can pack a mighty punch.