Importantly, I'm talking about one type of Asthma. The one were you're okay one moment, and heaving against a reaction the next. Chronically inflamed tubes I know nothing about.
Some attacks are dangerous. Yes, people do die of the problem...but most don't, and to many it becomes a distant memory. You need to know what category you fall into. Tough to do without paperwork being generated.
I had asthma when I was a kid. I was excused all school sports, and had dozens of broken nights lying in my cat-hair coated bed. All the heaving against the restriction seemed to do nothing but give me a powerful lung/diaphragm. Swimming and rowing didn't phase me, and saved my bacon strength-wise I suppose.
Running suddenly into cold air was a no-no. And some types of smoke - solder flux I think would be tricky. Mostly it was at night...and I bet a modern bed and a dust free room would have cured the problem right away.
I sort of grew out of it. Smoking the world's strongest cigars and a pipe seemed to make my reactive circuits just give up. ( mean this seriously, but there must be less dangerous ways of achieving this effect.)
By the time I was 18, I was a judo enthusiast, and don't recall a reaction doing that. 3 years later I was taking the first medical. I don't recall any questions in those days. If there were, they weren't very searching.
By the time I had been a pilot for some years, I had to go the Praed St for the 5 yearly. I gathered a crowd round the old cast iron pen machine as I blew into the tube time and time again. They wanted to see if I could blow the needle off the disc. I didn't, but I got to the edge of the paper.
I'll never know if that flow was improved by all the nights of fighting against restriction. There is no doubt in my mind that they made me able to puff harder once the pipes had stopped reacting.
The point about all this is a/ that you can grow out of asthma. Never call it My Asthma...just b
y asthma. Don't make a friend of it.
b/ Those nights of heaving away against the restriction. Look as them as a work-out period.
Keep an ace card up your sleeve until you are quite sure that your days of reacting are over. I carried Brovon for a couple of years without needing it.