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what it feels like: falling behind with asthma and learning how to catch up
6 minute read
josh rheaume with his wife kelly and their twin daughters, lily and lennon.
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if you’ve never been on the fringe of the schoolyard, bullied and friendless, you wouldn’t know how tough it is.
for josh rheaume, a 35-year-old dad and environmental technologist in sudbury, ont., he didn’t ask for this kind of treatment. just like everybody, he wanted friends, and he even tried out for sports but he physically couldn’t do it. he lived with severe asthma and relied on an inhaler to get through school days when he wasn’t in hospital for weeks on end.
there wasn’t much in the way of education and patient outreach about this chronic lung disease back then, he says, and his life was even more complicated by poverty and not having heat in the house in winter.
asthma a barrier to a ‘normal childhood’
“i just wasn’t really able to have a normal childhood,” he explains, speaking out about stigma associated with asthma so that other kids don’t have to live his reality. world asthma day is may 6, 2025 and he wants people to know what it’s like to be an innocent kid trying to cope with challenges.
he was diagnosed with asthma when he was five months old, was in hospital for most of his first two years where he remembers his mom sleeping in a chair by his bed. when josh was five, his dad left his mom and the family of four kids because, according to his mom, she spent too much time with josh at the hospital. as a single mom, she moved her kids out to british columbia for a fresh start but then went through two relationships with abusive men. josh remembers being in and out of homes for abused moms.
then they moved to nova scotia, where unfortunately his asthma got worse. he was under the care of a respirologist and later an allergist as well.
“so typically, they would start me off on a high corticosteroid which is an oral steroid,” he says of asthma treatment. “i was on that for high doses for most of my life. the one thing that really stands out would be the nebulizer, which is where you see kids with the mask on their face that they’re getting the medication through. i was also intubated twice as a kid, which means i couldn’t breathe on my own, so they put a tube down my throat.”
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animal dander and air particles can be triggers for asthma
his mom bought an old farmhouse in berwick, a rural town in the annapolis valley, known as the province’s apple capital. while this sounds idyllic, the house had dust mites and the family had cats, dogs, and some farm animals along with the neighbour’s cows in the backyard. “we had dust everywhere, and we had apple orchards nearby that were burning every year. they would trim the trees and they would burn all that. i was 10 years old and i was in the hospital three months a year. if i wasn’t in the hospital, i was not able to breathe at home. i was going through a puffer a day. but for me that was normal. i didn’t know anything else.”
what does an attack feel like? “you feel that restriction like you want to breathe because you need that air, but you can’t,” he says of the panic that’s hard to shake.
problem was, his asthma in the home environment with asthma triggers like dust and animal dander got worse. the first few years in the farmhouse, his mom couldn’t afford heat in the winter. eventually, she bought a wood stove, which is also bad for asthma because of the fumes and wood smoke that has fine particles that can get deep into the lungs and contain toxic substances.
and it was josh, the one struggling with the chronic disease, who also grew up shouldering a lot of guilt. his brothers and his sister would be at home alone or staying with someone while he was in the hospital with their mom, benefiting from the care in many ways.
“people don’t really consider that, but it takes such an emotional and mental toll on you. i’m in the hospital thinking i’m so fortunate that i’m getting this fresh hot food, which we didn’t always have at home. i had a warm bed to sleep in and people were taking care of me. so, i’m thinking about my brothers and my sister who are at home in the cold in wintertime.”
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own your disease and live without fear of stigma
when he was in high school, he collapsed in gym class because he was scared to take out his inhaler in front of the other students. he went by ambulance out of school to hospital. he wants to create awareness around asthma so that kids, teens and adults can own what they have and take care of themselves without fear of judgement.
by age 18, josh applied for colleges and opted for sudbury out of province because his respirologist advised him that living in nova scotia could be triggering his asthma. sure enough, he noticed a big difference right away. he was able to breathe better and reduce his medication from going through an inhaler every day or so to using up a puffer over an entire week.
“i didn’t start putting two and two together that it was really the conditions that i was living in that were a problem [in nova scotia]. i would go home and visit my mom, and within two days i would have a bad attack. now when i go visit, i’m in a hotel.”
as a young adult, he started to learn what his asthma triggers are, like dust, dander, and wildfire smoke (which made life difficult for him in the wildfires of summer 2023) and then he kept on learning, which is one of the main reasons for better management and quality of life. he’s never been off his inhalers, but he’s definitely turned his health around. he had a moment standing at his wedding with his wife six years ago when he decided to make some lifestyle changes, like eating healthier and exercising—considered taboo for people with asthma. “i was a big guy, 280 lbs. which is fine, but i was not comfortable with the skin i was in, but scared to do any exercise because it was always grilled into my head, ‘don’t do exercise. you’re going to have another attack. you’re going to end up at the hospital.’”
but he was fed up, also diagnosed with fatty liver and experiencing mental health problems like body dysmorphia. with his healthier diet, he started losing weight and noticed his asthma improved, thinking he should try exercise, no matter the cautions that he’d always heard from doctors.
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“i went for a run one day. i made it 100 metres, 200 metres, and i stopped to take my puffer. my asthma was bad. i came back the next day and i made it twice that distance.” he went on to run a full marathon in 2023 without using his inhaler once.
“i run marathons because i realized the power of lung conditioning and how good it could be for your lungs. now the common the consensus is it’s actually good for you, you just have to learn how to do it safely and understand how important it is to warm up, how important it is to cool down.”
he recognizes the value of education and awareness, but he also feels robbed of his childhood. why didn’t he know lung conditioning was so helpful for asthma? why didn’t doctors tell him? “i could have had those years back,” he says, adding he created an instagram account, @the.asthma.runner and podcast @beyondthewheeze to document his personal journey and help others live fully with better control of their asthma.
right now he considers his asthma in the best control that it’s ever been in. he has three air purifiers in his house, has the ducts cleaned twice a year and vacuums every single day. he keeps up with his twin girls, travel for work and, yes, the family dog.
his advice for others with the diagnosis?
“we’re all wired a little bit differently and no two sets of lungs are the same. so learn how to manage your specific breathing, your specific triggers so you can live a normal life. it really doesn’t have to be a limitation, and what somebody said to me not too long ago is asthma is just another obstacle that we have to overcome.”
for more information and resources on asthma, visit asthma canada.
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