I drag myself out of bed, take my preventative inhaler and head to the gym. By taking the inhaler, I can ward off exercise-induced asthma.
As a kid, I avoided sport because it made me breathless, but I didn’t know at the time that I had asthma.
I was only diagnosed when I did a course on asthma as part of my GP training.
It opened up a whole new world of sport to me once I knew how to control it.
So many kids find themselves in a similar situation, avoiding sport for fear of becoming breathless — they don’t know they have asthma.
After the gym, I head for the GP practice in Ashbourne, Co Meath, where I start seeing patients from 7.15am.
The early appointments are to facilitate people ahead of their working day.
Those early arrivals are chronic disease patients coming in for review,…