Diagnosing asthma in later life
Asthma does not only affect children – adults can develop it too. In all, five million people in the UK live with the condition.
One of these is 54 year old, Jeff Clay – he was diagnosed five years ago and says he couldn’t believe how bad it made him feel, "I wasn’t sleeping. I couldn’t get any air into myself. It was really strange. I used to lean my head right back to try and get the air."
Jeff’s no stranger to illness – he has arthritis and had a heart bypass in 1991. He believes that his previous cardiac problems overshadowed the asthma – it took a while for doctors to diagnose.
Once Jeff knew what he had, he then felt he could cope because he could manage and control it, "The instant I took the spray, the first two puffs I had I just felt so good because I’d forgotten what it was like to have energy and it just transformed my life."
