I haven’t done a real post about the whole asthma thing, but I read something this morning that got me wondering. On the night of March 3rd I played a typical hockey league game at the local ice rink. I remember actually feeling pretty good that night as I played wing instead of my usual center and wingers are lazy. I got home, went to bed and woke up at about 4 in the morning coughing and struggling to breathe. I wandered the house checking carbon monoxide detectors and generally being miserable. The next day the feeling never left so I went to the doctor. After a chest X-ray and CT scan they didn’t find anything and sent me home.
I was still laboring to breathe that night and the following morning so at my follow-up the doctor said I had adult-onset asthma — which is fairly typically for ice hockey players, he informed me — and sent me home with an inhaler. After 2 days with the inhaler I felt pretty normal. I didn’t think much of it aside from being a bit bummed given my desire to run a marathon this year and wondering what sorts of complications this was going to bring up.
As a bit of background, as of right now my weekly running distance is around 25 miles with an average run length of between 5 and 6 miles. I haven’t needed to use my inhaler since that incident though I have used it as a precautionary measure as recommended by my doctor before my hockey games and before my runs for the first week following that incident.
So then I read this article that popped up this morning on ESPN’s site. Here’s a few snippets.
In the past six months, nearly 200 people have been sickened by carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide or ultrafine particles emitted from poorly maintained ice resurfacers at indoor ice arenas.
One of those rinks was in Tampa, Fla., where the East Lake High School hockey team took the ice in January for a practice at the Tampa Bay Skating Academy. Players struggled to breathe during practice and as the night wore on, their symptoms worsened.
“I was playing normal, and then halfway through practice, my chest started feeling weird,” said East Lake player Alex Miller. “I had trouble breathing.”
Given my lack of symptoms even while exercising more than I ever have before it’s starting to seem more and more likely to me that, instead of asthma, I’m experiencing what this article is referring to. I’m curious how prevalent this really is.
ESPN saved your lifestyle! I can now watch/read ESPN with the excuse that it’s for my health.