10 a.m.

It's ten, my venti latte is down to it's last few sips and I'm still feeling okay (I would hope so, or it'd be a long day and night), if not a little unnerved by all this quiet time. My husband has Ethan at his make-up swim class and I'm trying to talk myself out of the but I miss Ethan mindset and just keep my mind busy. I might even be desperate enough to mop the kitchen floor while they're gone. (Gasp, shock, horror!)

In the meantime, I wanted to share some more asthma statistics. One of the biggest things that I know I had to learn is that there are several different types of asthma. Allergic asthma, exercise induced asthma (can I pretend I have this one?), cough-variant asthma, occupational asthma and environmental asthma. There are a whole lot of "triggers" that can trigger an asthma attack, and this is what makes asthma as a whole extremely intricate, hard to diagnose and annoying to treat. Everyone's asthma is different, as are everyone's "triggers." For Ethan, when we had our (thankfully short) cold snap here in South Florida, I couldn't even keep him outside. Running around at the park triggered an asthma attack more than once -- including one particularly scary one and I couldn't wait for our token Florida heat to kick back in.

With so many different types and triggers, asthma is more prevalent than it ever has been. The number of people diagnosed with asthma continues to rise, especially in rural areas where farming is on the rise. In Central and South America especially where farming is a huge way of life -- and thus so is dust and other allergen factors -- asthma keeps rising up. Unfortunately, the number of people with access to nebulizers or treatment is far too low.

Internationally, 250,000 people die from asthma per year. Again, almost ALL OF THESE DEATHS ARE AVOIDABLE. Again, this is why I'm blogging...in hopes one day, no lives will be lost due to an inability to breathe. Let's do this, Blogathon!