¶ … Chronic Disease on Patients Life
Managing chronic disease
Among the common chronic diseases that we have is asthma. Asthma is a disease that tends to be of airways and characterized by variable as well as ever occurring symptoms bronchospam, and reversible airflow obstruction. Some of its major symptoms include chest tightness, coughing, shortness of breath and wheezing. Cause of asthma has been associated with combination of environmental and genetic factors. How it is diagnosed depends on the spirometry, response to therapy over time, and the pattern of symptoms. This paper is based on the interview done towards children who were suffering from asthma in trying to describe these patients experience while living with asthma and what impact it has on their life.
My interview was carried out among children who were suffering from Asthma. They had different stories on the way they realized or came to discover that they were asthmatic however majority realized that they were suffering from asthma through their doctors. One of the child says that he was taken to the doctor for check up after he gradually developed problem of breathing and that is when he was diagnosed with asthma. It was difficult for him to accept that but with the help of his family and his doctor he had to accept and go on with his life as he tries to cope and manage its symptoms such as dyspnea, wheezing, and coughing so that he remain as the rest of the normal children, (National Institutes of Health, 2012). "I could cough all through the night that made my daddy and mummy to be very disturbed waking up to check me asking me how I was feeling." This chronic disease made these affected children to have limitations and social implications to their normal activities, for example they could not run long enough to make them score a point in a soccer game as well as others which involves a run or maybe the annoyed reaction of the fellow classmates when they wheeze.
Asthmatic children are always limited in activities, apart from finding themselves limited in physical activity as running that influences their success in most of the games and activities, they become less good in sports such as cycling and swimming.
Impact on social life
According to these children, they are always ignored or bullied since they have limited physical capacities particularly as they take part in physical education in school. Like during team formation, these children had a feeling that they have less chance of them chosen. There a must visit to the hospital or health care professionals making them miss school activities and sometimes becoming sick when they are in school. They complain of unpleasant diagnostic procedures such as histamine provocation tests, and other treatment procedures that they have to undergo. They feels that they miss essential schooling that makes them find it hard to cope with the class.
Asthmatic children always have to face disbelief of their fellow classmates that do consider their absence from school to be a positive thing but not negative. Some of the asthmatic symptoms such as coughing is not easily kept hidden from the fellow classmates and sometimes results in bullying. Some of them find it uncomfortable to explain the many aspects of asthma not once or twice but many times.
One child explains that "Not once, I was forced to visit hospital first then later is when I go to school but my fellow classmates says it is a liar, I didn't visit hospital, yet it is true I visited hospital."
"My classmates thinks that I am supposed to go home even during school hours that I'm ill and they also think that me I don't have to do maths, some of them think it is fun to have asthma because you are always going to be treated...
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