Asthma is a strange beast!

Asthma is one wily little devil. It seems people think 'no big deal - give an asthmatic an albuterol inhaler' and that will cure everything. Not exactly.

Asthma seems to change over time and wax and wane. The hardest thing is figuring out what your triggers are. And that isn't always as easy as it sounds. I was shopping for a baby gift last week at a local retail store and suddenly felt my chest tighten up and the hard cough starting. I have no idea what happened-was there a dusty shelf? Chemical sizing on the baby towel I bought? Something too fragrant in the baby shampoo aisle? Something on the aisle where I bought the rubber duck?

I was fine once I left the store, some things can never be explained. I have shopped there for almost 15 years and never had a problem.

Sometimes, I'm so busy, it takes a few minutes to dawn on me that I'm having a hard time breathing and getting that 'twitchy' feeling in my throat. Then the cough starts.

The hardest thing about summer is having a smoothie, otter pop, or any sort of iced treat. Since my trigger is usually cold temperatures, it does cause me to constantly cough when trying to eat any tasty iced treat. I usually give up an surrender my Jamba Juice to my sweet hubby after two sucks on the straw. That seems to be my limit. I have found that by eating ice cream slowly(ie licking it off the cone-never using a spoon) I can enjoy my all time favorite-chocolate peanut butter ice cream. But no cheating and using a spoon, or the chest tightens and the cough starts.

Ah, the curse of genetics. Thanks mom and dad for passing asthma on to me, and then what do I do? Pass it on to all 3 of my kids. More about them later.