"I followed an Asthma Action Plan, which was effective" | Tham Su Ming, 25

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My childhood consisted of frequent upper respiratory tract infections which caused recurrent symptoms such as severe coughing and chest tightness. The doctor told my parents it was due to asthma and started me on inhalers. Eventually, my treatment tapered down to solely relievers, which is what I use now.

As a child, I followed an Asthma Action Plan, which was effective. Now, I don't have a plan as my asthma is well controlled, so I just take my reliever as and when I need it.

However, until starting medical school, I never even knew what an asthma action plan was. I realised that this was fairly common with all the asthma patients I've encountered during medical school – all of them knew that they have a plan to stick to for their asthma management but never knew what an asthma action plan was. Perhaps this is something we can improve on as doctors.

A challenge I had to overcome to optimise my asthma control was when I was in my teens – I initially thought that I had "outgrown"   the disease but realised that was not true. I had pretty frequent bouts of attacks when I was 16 or 17 years old and had to go back on preventer inhalers for about 6 months, which was troublesome.

My family and friends had a few misconceptions about asthma. A common one was that I wasn't allowed to have "cold" food when I was younger (ice-cream, milkshakes, cold drinks and even certain fruits) which kind of took some joy away as a child. In retrospect, it’s a good thing now as I don't really crave foods like that in adulthood, which is good for my own blood sugar, I suppose!

I was also told by some people that I should not live abroad in countries that have cold weather because it could worsen my asthma. Conversely, some people told me that I should go live abroad because that would improve my asthma. This is just an example of the many different misconceptions about asthma and it’s important that we as patients ensure that the community is educated on these matters to bring awareness.

Real Life Asthma Stories Booklet

This asthma life story is part of a booklet of stories created for community engagement in Malaysia. Read all the stories in the booklet produced by the University of Malaya and Universiti Putra Malaysia, RESPIRE partner organisations in Malaysia.