Abigail M. Schilling

When I was seven, I remember being shown a diagram of the human air passages.

"See, your air travels through this tube here," the doctor said. "But when you have asthma it's all blocked up--" He turned the page to a much uglier diagram.

"--and the air can't travel through very well."

It helped me understand why it hurt. To breathe. To walk. To laugh.

A lot of times when I was a little the asthma would get really bad in the middle of the night and I would wake my mom up and we would go to the hospital where they would pump me full of meds.

Then came the nebulizer, the big whirring machine that I would hook up to at least three times a day for almost 30 minutes per time. I remember sitting there and thinking the 30 minutes would never be up. Time stood still for weeks. After the medication infiltrated my bloodstream and supposedly cleared my airways and I would shake.

The asthma has come and gone with age. I was virtually cured in high school. In college it only bothered me when it was really cold out. But more recently, in the past year, it has started to trouble me again.

Early last spring I started experiencing the wheezing again. The rule goes something like this: if you have to use a emergency inhaler more than twice a day then you should be on some sort of preventative medicine. I counted the puffs and made a doctor's appointment for four days later.

The day before my doctor's appointment I used my inhaler 8 times. Then I was maxed out. You can only puff so many times before it's considered overdose and if I was going to die from overdose it certainly wasn't going to be that kind of drug. I woke up in the middle of the night, startled by my inability to breathe.

I tried to talk myself into breathing again, tried to talk my airways into to clearing up and working at 100 percent capacity. I could control it for almost a minute and then I would cough and the wheezing would come back even stronger.

I knew I had to go to the hospital but I didn't have a car and I wasn't sure which person to wake up and make them take me. So I called my mom. She couldn't take me to the hospital--she was in Chicago--but she could make a good decision. So we talked on the phone for a bit and my breathing started to even out. I spent that night sleeping upright because going horizontal is hard on the lungs. The next morning I saw the doctor and got a killer prescription. I was okay and normal in no time.

A little over a week ago, the asthma came back again. I've been using my inhaler regularly and it still makes me shake and the shaking wears me out and I feel like sleeping isn't quite sleeping anymore. I started using the inhaler more than twice a day four days ago. I made an appointment with the doctor and I will see her tomorrow morning.

But last night I woke up at 2:12 a.m. in a start because I was suffocating. It took moments before I realized why and could make myself cough. I puffed puffed puffed, shook, shook, shook, and eventually got back to sleep hoping I wouldn't have to wake up again that night. I didn't.

Today, I have used my inhaler 6 times. I'm going to use it again when I'm done writing this post. I will definitely max out. And I have a premonition about tonight. I've pretty much packed a hospital bag (much like expectant mothers do) and printed out the directions to the ER.

Heather Anne went to the hospital Monday and her whole family unit freaked on her because they found out about it via her blog. After the fact.

So, in light of that experience, I would like to make the announcement to friends, family, loved ones, and blog readers that I may be going to the hospital tonight on account of because of my inoperable lungs. If you would like to know when this is happening and sleep with your cell phone please comment or email me your phone number and explicit wishes.