Delhi teacher couldn’t breathe although she had no asthma, allergy or flu: How pollution is taking a toll on healthy lungs | Health and Wellness News
A 40-year-old school teacher walked into the OPD, distraught, listless and breathless. She had had three weeks of persistent nose block, with thick nasal discharge, facial heaviness and a wet cough which had begun as dry bouts. Yet she had no past history of asthma, sinusitis episodes, allergies, infection or cough and cold. In fact, she had never had major respiratory issues at all. And yet there she was, hardly able to breathe and needed steroid nasal sprays and nebulisers, as if she were an asthma patient. Initially, she thought she had just been infected by the seasonal flu virus and her fever was indeed gone in a day. But then she tested negative for the flu. Her stuffiness persisted despite taking anti-allergens and antihistamines. What’s more, she was wheezing like an asthmatic, the first sign that she was having trouble breathing because of blocked or narrowed airways. She said the wheezing would increase in the mornings and the evenings. She would have sudden bouts of dry cough, which lasted well over a minute, straining …
