The asthmatic sports star

Dash woke up at night to a strange sensation: her entire lungs were burning like fire. She tried it with a lot of water first, but it didn't erase the sandpaper feeling in her throat. So she tried coughing.

Which, turns out, was a bad idea. It got out of control and she quickly grabbed her inhaler, but even ten minutes later it didn't let up. By that time her mother had woken up by the sound and came to check on her.

The burning made it hard to breathe. Or in other words, it made her want to stop. She gave her alarm clock a quick glance. It was 1 am. Dash would have groaned if she had the strength to do so. She was in for a loooong night.

* * *

Dash had been awake ever since, and her mother said they were going to the doctors in an hour.

So she was laying in bed, petting her pet tortoise Tank, and wondered what she did to deserve this.

Then it was finally time to leave.

The doctor was pretty full today, (lol reading this again is hilarious, because 1:1 translated into my language it would mean he's drunk ) and they had to wait for a lot of hours.

Dash was especially disgusted by the person that sat opposite of her. That woman was reading a magazine that the waiting room provided. Now, that isn't really unusual. But she was coughing into her hand and then just touched the pages again! She even once saw her lick a finger to turn the page.

The thought of the next patient touching the pages and getting the same thing from her was disgusting her to no end.

Plus the woman's constant coughing was triggering hers, and by now she didn't have the strength - from nonstop coughing since 1 am - to actually do it anymore, plus it hurt like hell.

Almost three hours later it was finally their turn. Dash needed her mother to do the talking for her.

Though that didn't go so well as she kept saying and explaining wrong things. So she took over.

After a lot of explaining, he went with Dash into the next room to listen to her lungs with a stethoscope.

Then they went back over and had another load of talking.

In the end he's come to the conclusion that her current inhaler wasn't strong enough and he prescribed her a new, stronger one. He also put her on cortisone pills for the week.
So her new plan for the week (and after that) looked like this:

Morning: two puffs of normal inhaler plus cortisone tablet

Throughout the day whenever the coughing got too worse she had to use the new inhaler, as their difference was that the new one only lastet shortly but was for acute need.

And in the evening another two puffs from her normal one and another tablet.

The cortisone was only for five days, but the inhaler use-plan was (maybe) for the rest of her life.

So for now she was pretty much only kept alive with a lot of spray medicine and tablets that had a long list of side effects. (I'm not kidding I looked them up in the package insert.)

He also said that this was only happening because the last attack(s) were too much for her sensitive bronchi and that they had gotten badly inflamed.

You see - when you have an asthma attack, the little airways in the bronchi contract, meaning they swell and that alone can be really painful. When they are swollen, they emit mucus, which can - in very severe cases - close up the airways completely and its life threatening. So with them constantly inflamed and swollen, they constantly emit mucus that has to be coughed up. (See: https://youtu.be/7EDo9pUYvPE for a visual explanation)

So for now she was on bed rest.

* * *

The next day her mother brought the doctors note to the school to just let them know that she wouldn't come back for a week.

When she was done with that, she ran into Applejack, Sunset, Twilight, Pinkie, Rarity and Fluttershy, who were fearing for the absolute worst: that she was here to unregister Dash from the school.

"Miss Dash!" Sunset called.

"Oh, hello Rainbow's friends." She said with a smile, not knowing of their fight.

"Is Dash okay?!" Applejack almost yelled.

"I wish I could say yes. I came here to bring a doctors note. But don't worry, she'll be back in a week." She said, still smiling.

"What's wrong? She's not at the hospital again, is she?" Fluttershy asked, afraid for her friends health.

"Oh no, she's at home. But she has strict bed rest and on a lot of medication." Her mother explained.

They all sighed in slight relief.

"I think she would be happy about some visitors. Don't worry, it's not contagious, it's only asthma related."

Applejack grimaced. "Uh.. you gals can go visit her, I uh.. got farm work ta do at home."

Sunset gave her a sympathetic look.

"Sure we'll come by after school! Maybe we can cheer her up!!" Pinkie said with joy.

Dash's mother smiled. "But take it easy on her, she's still in a lot of pain and needs her rest. I have to go to work now and I'll be home later this evening. But my husband is at home, just in case something happens and we need medical assistance." She said before leaving the school.

The news were shocking to say the least for her friends. The bell rang and they were brought back to reality.

They still had school!