If you could change one thing...

When asked "if you could change one thing about yourself, what would you changed?" There is no hesitation as to what my answer would be.

For the past five years (give or take a year), I've been suffering with extremely bad asthma. In between breaths of fresh air, I often wonder how this will effect my lifespan. I've always had asthma, but it became considerably worse in my early twenties. Trips to my mother's for the holidays had me walking out the door gagging, and eventually purging as I stumbled home, just two blocks away. Later, I was in a permanent Benadryl induced high as I tried to curb the effects of my roommate's cat. And later still, I would have to be rushed to clinics and the ER where I would receive emergency treatment.

I had asthma attacks when I was younger too though. My adolescence and youth was characterized by y state of perma-sniffles, due to pollen. As my animal allergies materialized, I would get occasional sniffles and discomfort around animals. The asthma attacks started, though, at 16. My first major asthma attack was at Christmas.

Prior to that, I lived with my aunt in my grandparent's family home. She smoked quite heavily, but it never seemed to be a problem. Until she moved closer to work. My presumption is that, having lived among smokers my entire life, my body adjusted to being in a constantly toxic atmosphere. It became good at defending itself perhaps. Second hand smoke never bothered me, but after my aunt moved out, whenever she came to visit I would have tightness of the chest. One Christmas, we had an abnormal amount of family members visit us for the holidays. Older, smoking family members. My chest became heavy and I developed a bad headache - likely from coughing. I spent the rest of the night in my room and wasn't much better for two days.

The asthma attacks would pop up once in awhile after that, but didn't reach their current severity till I was around 22. After that the attacks have been a constant frustration in my life. Between ventilin, pulmicort, Benadryl and hot cups of coffee, I've tried to live with it as best as possible. Recently I've begun the Paleolithic diet after reading another asthmatic blogger's success story. There hasn't been much improvement yet but I hope to see improvements in time.

My ideal solution would be to find a long term treatment that would reduce my attacks to nothing. To achieve this I would be willing to make a complete lifestyle change - if going on the Paleo-diet were any indication of that.