1. you have used inhalers as toy guns before.
2. people who smoke make you want to shout at kittens.
3. there is no such thing as 'just a cold'.
4. realising you've left your reliever at home is almost worse than realising you've left your phone.
5. you just keep collecting pyjamas.
6. you have inhalers everywhere.
7. you have hand sanitiser in almost as many places!
8. you realise you probably should buy a tent for the GP surgery.
9. you can put together a neb, or inhaler+spacer combo, in your sleep.
10. you have literally had dreams in which you can breathe normally, and then been peed off when you've woken up to reality.
11. your speed-dial numbers include the GP surgery, the hospital, your parents, and your favourite take-out.
12. you know the take-outs which deliver to the hospital and which don't.
13. you keep finding inhaler caps, repeat prescriptions, boxes, patient info leaflets, nebule caps, and empty canisters in really weird places…
14. when your asthma is going through a period of being controlled, you forget to fill your repeats because you'd usually be in the doctor's every couple of weeks so you got used to just asking for 'one of everything'!
15. you don't understand how anyone could not know what their meds were for.
16. when you're recovering from an exacerbation, you sometimes find yourself just waiting for the next round of meds.
17. people who have 'never been ill' in their lives are your version of a medical mystery.
18. you know the best place to get venous blood and the best place to get arterial blood.
19. there's a possibility you might have said 'bloody sweet-spots' marked with a tattoo…
20. you feel a sense of dread when someone walks into class, sits next to you, and coughs.
21. you have genuinely used an ethanol-propelled inhaler as an emergency breath-neutralising device.
22. a beeping machine makes you reach out to reset the IV…only to realise it's your phone.
23. (on a similar tack to #22) you have freaked out before when you saw your sats were 75%, before realising that the number you were looking at was actually your battery percentage.
24. you have been sent to the head-teacher before after a joke about 'steroid hunger' (pred hunger) got heard out of context…
25. you have stood staring at your cyanosed fingers in shock, wondering how it's possible when you can breathe fine, then licked the blackberry juice off them!
26. a PEFR of 75% of your personal best has been cause for celebration!
27. you celebrated the awesome progress of #26, before seeing that your favourite CF blogger's kid with CF got 122% on their last spirometry…
28. you perform the 'sink-or-swim' test on your inhalers.
29. you more or less know when your inhalers are empty, just on how heavy they are.
30. you have been known to 'accidentally' knock your peak flow meter in hospital to make the reading just a teensy bit better.
31. for the longest time you didn't realise some people don't have allergies.
32. you have been caught telling a pug that you 'know the pain, buddy'.
33. you ask for strawberry O2 every time you're in, even when you know they don't have it, on the off chance that they'll take a hint and get that little hitch sorted for the next time…
34. 'see you' is a perfectly acceptable and very true phrase to utter when you leave the ED/A&E.
35. you joke with your best friend about 'lung-to-lungs', 'lung time no see', etc..
36. you view e-cigs as one of the worst inventions of all time.
37. you know CFers have it worse but…darn it you still wish you could get free prescriptions.
38. you get a headache and immediately check your peak flow and your fingertips, like any normal person(!)
39. (courtesy of a friend) you have been stop-searched at a foreign airport because they thought your spacer was a bomb component.
40. someone asks you how you are and you reply with your latest peak flow reading…
***
I can't think of any more right now, although I'm sure there are at least another 50 in my head somewhere! Do you agree with these? Which are your favourites? Do you have any to add?
-- Matt