Opinion: Asthma is a horrible disease. Wildfires make it even more horrible

Editor’s note: Pamela Appiah is a New York-based journalist covering health, science, and intersectionality. Opinions expressed here are her own. Further comments On CNN

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Asthma took the life of my mother, both of my children have had it at different times in their lives, and I myself had a relatively short bout of asthma a few years ago. I am better now, but I remain terrified that my asthma could return and change my family’s lives forever, landing me in hospital in the middle of the night. It’s either a trip to the emergency room or your kids missing school again.

I worry about my asthma in the winter when the frigid, dry air narrows and inflames my airways, making it hard to breathe. I worry in the spring when pollen in the air makes me wheeze, cough and short of breath. I worry in the fall when my lungs aren’t yet accustomed to the colder weather and ragweed pollen fills the air.

However, these days, my fears about asthma are mostly centered around the summer months.

Last year, thick, black smoke poured out from raging wildfires in Canada, blackening the skies across the northern plains of the United States and polluting the air all the way to New York City, where I live. A blanket of smog covered much of the United States and fell on areas as far away as Florida. Some of the smoke even reached Europe. My family endured the worst of the smog indoors, and we were lucky that no one got sick.

Now we may be heading for a repeat of last summer’s situation. Families like ours who have asthma are once again bracing themselves. Stifling heat and devastating wildfires have returned to Canada. Wildfires across the border in Canada last month forced hundreds of people to evacuate. Minnesota and Wisconsin issued warnings last month to residents to stay indoors.

It was mid-May, and it was still spring. I shudder to think what August will bring. Studies have shown that wildfire smoke may be linked to the onset of asthma. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are about 25 million Americans with asthma. So I suspect there are many others out there who feel the same fear I do.

There’s another connection between Canada, asthma, and my family, and it’s a somewhat serendipitous one: My mother, an immigrant from Ghana, lived in Canada for many years but didn’t develop asthma until she immigrated to the United States.

Her circuitous journey is not uncommon for people who migrated from Africa to North America. After immigrating from Ghana, my mother spent a few years in the UK before moving to Quebec, where she lived and worked. She got divorced and was left to raise me, my sister, and my two brothers on her own. She ultimately decided that New York City, with its affluent immigrant community that included a significant number of African-Americans, would be a better place to raise our family than the remote rural Canadian village where we were the only Black people.

However, shortly after arriving in the United States, my mother developed adult-onset asthma. The cause could be stress, environmental issues, genetics, or a combination of factors. It’s impossible to say for sure. I was about 10 years old when my mother began to get sick frequently. But even at that young age, I quickly learned that asthma medications in the United States were prohibitively expensive. The high prices sometimes meant that my mother couldn’t get the medicine she desperately needed.

Since losing someone close to me to asthma, I’ve become all too familiar with the signs of the disease. Although my mother rarely confided in me or my three siblings when she was unwell, I learned to read her symptoms as a child. I remember feeling helpless during her asthma attacks as her wheezing got progressively worse.

I occasionally accompanied my mother to medical appointments, and I grew concerned as she listed off a string of symptoms, including tightness in her chest and an inability to fill her lungs. After each bout of labored breathing, she appeared exhausted and weak. I now understand that an asthma attack, especially if poorly treated, can take a toll on the body. I believe the damage caused by the cumulative effects of asthma attacks may have claimed her life.

Unfortunately, the challenges my mother faced in obtaining her asthma medication continued. Copays and uncovered prescription drug costs strained our family budget. Worried about the cost, my mother sometimes refused to fill her asthma prescriptions. Then, one night about 30 years ago, she had another asthma attack. It was a particularly severe attack that left her so short of breath that she could only speak a few words at a time.

That day, before she completely lost the ability to speak, my mother asked me to call a family friend to take her to the hospital. Worried about money, as she always did, she was worried that the cost of an ambulance would put an even greater strain on our finances. When we finally got to the emergency room, my mother was unconscious. A short time later, she passed away. Asthma had robbed her of what should have been the prime of her life at just 48 years old.

I have lived with asthma for many years, struggling with its signs and symptoms – first as the child of a parent with asthma, and then as the mother of two children who developed severe asthma. We know that asthma has a genetic component, and studies have shown that if a parent has asthma, there is a 25% chance that you will also develop asthma.

I remember my mother trying to save on medication, and I don’t know what I would have done without a reliable supply of albuterol, a home nebulizer, maintenance medications, and the guidance of medical professionals I respected and trusted.

Still, because there is no cure for asthma and my family is highly susceptible to it, I remain vigilant.

I keep a close eye on the pollen count and news reports about shortages of potentially life-saving medications my family needs to combat asthma.

I also now keep a close eye on the weather forecast, as fires thousands of miles away could spark another terrifying attack of this disease that has already taken so much from me.