I think it’s fair to say that the past couple of days haven’t been so good. I would usually just blame Valentines Day, but I’m getting too old now, and besides, it wouldn’t be true.

Instead, asthma has struck again, creeping up slowly like the mist over a hill, and I’m writing this plugged into my nebuliser after seven days on steroids and the same on antibiotics, plus my usual inhalers.

I’ve only taken 7000 steps today but it has felt like climbing Kilimanjaro and I slept for two hours this afternoon…and the same the day before that. This makes up for not sleeping at night (good old steroids) and the fact I’m like a furnace, although it’s hard to tell which is temper and which is temperature.

Lying down post nebuliser, my heart is pounding like it has done a marathon when it has just had to make the stairs. I feel heartbroken and emotional and like I have lost my clown shoes, and it’s all down to my lungs.

I’m also hungry (steroids), angry (steroids) and tearful (steroids). Happily I have an asthma review on Monday to discuss further treatment, because things cannot go on as they are before I become a sobbing, wheezy heap.

Brittle asthma is expensive. In extremis, Taxis to work get you there and back so you don’t walk in gasping for breath, and so you don’t have to ask for a seat on the Tube (An “Asthma on board” badge doesn’t have a smiling induced turn of phrase about it).

When I do travel, I always walk downhill in the mornings so my lungs get to wake up gently. They don’t like inclines. And – if one more person tells me to breathe through a scarf, I will wrap it round their neck.

Asthma also makes you fatter. By day three on steroids, I look like a potato, a delicious combination of being ravenous and having water retention. My eyes disappear into a rounder than ever face and my 40 year old body no longer metabolises the tiny pills like it once did.

Usually I am a positive person. My clown shoes are normally polished and stepping out. However the steroids and being tired make me weepy.

So far today, I have cried about a US Space robot going to sleep on the Moon, London’s homelessness problem that I can’t solve and really just bring honest that I sometimes find it scary and lonely living by myself with illness.

I feel embarrassed describing my sense of despair and and hopelessness after a week of not being able to breathe very well. I feel ashamed that I might not be able to concentrate at work as well as I should (steroids again) and emotional when anyone is kind, or unkind. Usually it’s because they are kind.

So, what to do? Take it slowly, have the asthma review and be honest that I’m not always ‘fine’. In short, one step, and one day, at a time.

Sorry for whinging – but thank you for reading. Deep breaths.