New Haven Independent

Once you have asthma under control, you can live a completely normal life. That was the message that Raymond, a Vincent Mauro fourth-grader, and some 400 other New Haven Public School kids were happily declaring in a half day of games, marches, and fun Friday at the New Haven Field House.

The festivities were timed to mark World Asthma Day and National Asthma Awareness Month in New Haven, the sixth year the initiatives have been undertaken in the city.

According to a city release provided by Ashika Brinkley, the city health department’s coordinator for asthma initiatives, about 18 percent of New Haven school kids have asthma. That means that some 72 kids of the 400 from eight schools assembled in the field house had the disease.

While asthma rates, she said, are going down nationally, they are in general rising in New England. That’s because old housing stock that harbors triggers for attacks and the prevailing winds that blow east.

As measured by number of admissions to the emergency room for asthma conditions, New Haven’s asthma rate is highest in the state.

Brinkley (pictured wtih Mauro fourth-grader Maria Cervantes and Storm, mascot of the Bridgeport hockey Sound Tigers) said the purpose of the asthma awareness activities was twofold: for those who have asthma, to provide information about control; and for those who don’t, to dispel stigmas.

“Probably the biggest stigma,” she said, “is when you get the disease, you become sickly and frail and sit by the window and watch other people playing. Not so, as you see around here. And remember great athletes like the Olympic champion swimmer Michael Phelps have asthma. The key thing is control.”

That was a lesson that several of these Hillhouse High track team members, volunteers for the asthma games, themselves lived. Ellen Bethea (second from right) was playing basketball when she was a seventh-grader.

Suddenly she couldn’t catch her breath. She was really alarmed, to say the least. “They took me to the hospital and hooked me up to machine and checked me,” she reported as she and her teammates were setting up a game called “Bowl Down the Triggers.”

Now she keeps a pump in reserve although she uses it sparingly. In addition to running races, Ellen throws the javelin.

Tenth-grader Jenna Wilborn’s (to Ellen’s right) mom is a nurse with asthma, so she knows all about the triggers that set off an attack. In her mom’s case the culprits are certain foods and exercise.

Raymond DeWitt said that in his case sunflower seeds sometimes set off a rash and wheezing that then might trigger his asthma.

Among the triggers to be bowled down in the game the Hillhouse kids were playing were mites, cockroaches, pollen, cigar and cigarette smoke, and rodents.

While Vincent Mauro kids like (right to left in the foreground) Maria Cervantes and Miranda Noad were having fun, and the message was that control equals normalcy, Ashika Brinkley emphasized the seriousness of the disease.

“It’s also important,” she said, “to dispel the notion that asthma isn’t serious. You certainly can die from it, and a popular asthma myth is that you can be cured. It’s just not so. Like diabetes, you control it. You can have an episode in childhood, such as, for example pre-pubescent boys can come down with it, then it’s controlled, and might not surface for years. And current research indicates menopause in women is associated with asthma too.”

For kids like Raymond DeWitt who need to have pumps around, one is always either in the classroom with his teacher or in the school nurse’s office. It was conveniently in his hand when he was playing Bowl Over the Triggers.

Did he know if exercise might trigger his asthma? Absolutely. “When I’m running fast, I just think about running,” he said, “and sometimes I forget to breathe. But I’m working on it with my dad. We practice, and he says that I need to count and after every two steps, I have to breathe. It works.”

Brinkley said that for more information or for those without insurance or who are underinsured and need free supplies of medicines for asthma control, she can be called at: 946-8457 or emailed here.