I am not trying to be funny with this headline, this is what happened to me this weekend….

I traveled with my husband to spend the weekend at a friends house knowing they had a cat. I forgot my inhaler which I last used over a year ago but still keep for situations, ironically, just like this.

We arrived very late a night, I met the cat and the hairiest dog and thought nothing of it until after a hour of chatting with our hosts we retired to our room and laid down in bed….. in a room with wall to wall carpeting…. on the section of the house which the cat loves…. and discovered quickly I was having a lot of difficulty breathing. After failing to find a better position to breathe and discussing with my husband that I needed a doctor and a 24hr pharmacy to get an inhaler (and neither were likely at this hour, 2am), I decided to see how removing myself from the exposure would work before taking more drastic measures….

So I sat in a room with no carpeting for a bit, and started to fiddle with my blackberry in hopes of distracting myself so I could relax with this problem…  I then decided to search “acupressure + points + asthma” and see if I could find something which could make this moderate and really uncomfortable asthma attack more bearable so I could at least sleep through the night.

Well, I did.

The first hit I got illustrated 3 points bilaterally on the hands/arms and 2 separate chains of points on the feet/ankles which I was to press in different ways until I achieved the desired effect: decreased wheezing and relaxed breathing.

Much to my surprise (even for me, a fan of acupuncture) the FIRST point I pressed on my left thumb IMMEDIATELY reduced my wheezing!  I am not exaggerating. Hows that possible? I don’t know if I’m doing it right? I don’t have that answer, but that’s what happened.  It took about 20-30 minutes of acupressure on myself to stabilize its effects so they symptoms would not return, eventually I was able to fall back asleep. Possibly there are naysayers who would read this and think- oh, it was placebo.  All I can say to that is, it was a pretty strong placebo to reverse those symptoms!

The next day I got my hands on an inhaler which carried me though the night with no problem. I am, however, grateful for the website publishing that information and love my blackberry even more!