There are two very important things to keep in mind about living with asthma:
1. Asthma should be taken seriously.
Asthma is a chronic disease that can result in suffering, disability and even death. It is also very expensive. In the United States alone, more than $6 billion is spent on medical care for asthma annually, and about $1 billion more is lost through missed work days and decreased productivity. Nationally, there are in the neighborhood of 500,000 hospitalizations and 2 million emergency room visits each year due to asthma. The human suffering that lies behind these statistics, of course, cannot be quantified.
There are about 5,000 asthma deaths every year in the United States. Worldwide unnecessary asthma deaths are estimated at 1 million per decade. People who die of asthma usually had asthma that was not under good control (though they may not have recognized it), and often they delayed in seeking emergency care when their symptoms worsened.
2. Asthma can be controlled.
The good news (and the irony) is that suffering, disability, and deaths from asthma are preventable as they have never been before. Current treatment strategies have the potential to provide good disease control for the vast majority of asthmatics. Good disease control means symptom-free days, weeks, and months. It means normal activity that is uncompromised by breathing trouble. It means avoiding the emergency room and the hospital. It means staying alive.
Asthma Medicines
Medication, either breathed in (with an inhaler or a nebulizer) or taken orally (in the form of pills or syrups), is an important part of complete asthma care. There are many different medicines available to treat asthma, but there are two main categories:
1. CONTROLLER MEDICINES are asthma maintenance medications that give long-term control. Most of them get at the root of the main problem in asthma (inflammation). They    need to be taken everyday, or they do not work effectively
2. RESCUE MEDICINES treat sudden or unexpected asthma symptoms. They provide short-term relief of coughing and wheezing, but they do not reduce inflammation. They are important to have around in case of breathing trouble.