Asthma
Demi has suffered from her respiratory tract since she was little. Because she has a chronic cold and always breathes heavily, she had her tonsils removed at the age of four. When she was seven years old, she contracted whooping cough, a respiratory infection. But when she goes to the doctor, it turns out that there is much more going on with her airways.
“I was on holiday with my parents and coughed my lungs out. That was so intense that it even made me throw up. But I was also very short of breath. We didn’t understand that at first. After the holidays we went straight to the doctor. The doctor’s examination showed that I not only had whooping cough, but also asthma. So the asthma was actually discovered by chance,” says Demi.
Youth
Although you will recover from whooping cough, asthma is a persistent inflammation of the small airway tubes in the lungs. “I don’t think I really understood what asthma meant at such a young age. As a child you don’t think: I have less air than someone else. Somehow I didn’t know any better. For me, that realization only came later in my youth.”
“I noticed that I always had a longer recovery period than other children if, for example, I had been ill. Or when we had gym at school I noticed that I got out of breath more quickly. I was always on medication. As a child that is of course not fun, because you are a bit different from the rest.”
