At first I ran 5Ks, then 10Ks, then two half marathons. Last December, I finished my ninth race of the year, qualifying me for the 2014 New York City Marathon. Days later, I coughed all night, which was unusual. Yet I walked to work in the wind. My commute normally took 15 minutes, but the icy dry air triggered constriction in my airways, forcing me to stop every few steps. By the time I got to work, gasping and breaking out in hives, I was having my first full-blown asthma attack. “How can I have asthma?” I asked my quickly assembled medical team: my general practitioner, my allergist, and my pulmonologist. “I’m an ox.”
read more…