To understand this profound struggle, the "PSK Pharma" team, together with a proactive group of physicians from across the country - participants of the XXXV National Congress on Respiratory Diseases - descended 18 stories underground into a bunker.
For those of us in good health, breathing is a given. We describe an easy task as being "as simple as breathing," scarcely noticing the over 20,000 breaths we take each day.
But for patients with asthma and COPD, every single one of those breaths can be an ordeal. Shortness of breath, a feeling of air hunger, suffocation. The participants of the experiment came to understand the true weight of this condition through their own direct experience.
We asked them to share their impressions:
"With every step down the narrow staircase, the air seemed to grow thicker, turning from weightless into a heavy, damp substance. When the hermetic door sealed shut, we were gripped by panic. Our inhalations became rapid, short, and shallow, failing to fill our lungs, while each exhalation required a conscious effort."
"We were plunged into a world of extreme concentration on what normally happens effortlessly - the simple, yet now unattainable, act of breathing. All thoughts narrowed to a single goal: just to breathe. Everything else ceased to exist."
"It brought a physical, visceral understanding of the daily reality for a person whose lungs treacherously constrict during an asthma attack or are slowly destroyed by COPD.
To return to the surface and take that long-awaited, free, and deep breath is a priceless gift. And modern therapy is capable of restoring this gift to those who have lost the ability to breathe easily due to illness.
A core mission of PSK Pharma is to make modern treatments accessible to all patients with COPD and asthma who need them, returning to them the sensation of freedom and ease of breathing. So that they may live life to the fullest, without a second thought for every single breath they take.
