Hello all. My name is Erika. I'm 26, married with a daughter and in the army. I'm stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC. I'm in an interesting situation regarding my health and hoping someone can offer some advice. My family and I got to Ft. Bragg in November of '05 but due to a hip injury, I was unable to run for close to a year. In that time, I developed some minor allergies while being here and have been on zyrtec. This past november, fully healed, I started running again. From then on, I cannot run more than 2 minutes without feeling like my throat is closing up. The first thing that happens is really weird. I feel this odd pain shoot up my wrists and up my arms. Then my head starts to pound, I start coughing and having to constantly spit. Then finally my throat feels like it's closing up and I can't breath at all at which point I stop running. It's worse in the dry cold (30 degrees or so). The rest of the day, I have a constant, hacking dry cough and a pounding headache which sometimes develops into a migraine.
I've never had any symptoms like this ever in my life. I grew up in upstate NY so I'm used to the cold and I used to play soccer in the winter so I'm conditioned to physical activity in the cold. I did Basic in SC and my job training in MD and didn't have these problems either so I'm not sure what's going on.
I've had three spirometry tests all of which apparently have read that I have good lungs. I had one doctor tell me that I possibly have vocal cord dysfunction which is basically (this is in her words, not mine) "A condition that is mostly found in Type A females...there is no treatment for it...you need to pant when you run, that will release the chemicals in your brain to your vocal cords to tell them to unswell..." or something of that nature. Yeah, I tried panting. I really did. I almost passed out. My 1sg ran up behind me and was ready to catch me. THen I saw a pulmonary specialist last week and he set me up for a "Methacholine Challenge Test" in a few weeks. Anyone had one of these before? I'm a little scared and confused at what's going on with me....If I can't run, my whole Army career is at stake.

Thanks for listening and TIA for any words of advice....

God Bless!

Te Methocoline Challenge will determine if you have asthma. If it is regular astham or EIA, two puffs of albuterol before cardio should take care of it. I'm a jogger and can only get about 2 blocks before I'm wheezing like crazy if I don;t do the two puffs 20 minutes before I go jog. Works like a charm...can run all I want after.

Good luck! You'll be fine.

Hi

I have asthma and a slight vocal cord dysfunction. When I have breathing problems I never know if it is one or the other or both.
I can relate to your problem because of the vocal cord dysfunction I have been told that my throat closes up. I have been told that the only treatment is breathing and relaxation exercises so maybe you can find out about them. The methocoline challenge is where you breathe in some histimine I think that's the spelling and they want to see how much you can tolerate before you have asthma symptoms. It also consists of a breathing test and then they determine by the numbers of your test if you have asthma.

I hope this helps. Good luck and stay well.

Karen