I am a 29 year old male with no family history or personal history of asthma. About a week ago now, I had just finished a day of working in the yard and was about to go to bed when I noticed a peculiar tightening in my chest and trouble drawing a full breath. At the time, it didn't concern me overmuch, since I am/was a smoker and it sometimes happened that my chest got tight like that at night when I'd smoked too much. It would always be gone when I got up in the morning.
This time, though, it didn't, and here I am a week later still having to work for breath. I saw a doctor twice over the past week about it. On the first visit I had a bronchodilator treatment, which improved things temporarily, along with chest x-rays and a peak flow test. The x-rays were clear aside from my smoker's lung, according to the doctor, and the bronchodilation improved the peak flow by about 150. He diagnosed reactive airway disease, put me on a once-a-day of Asmanex and sent me home. My symptoms would improve slightly after a treatment, but didn't really get any better, just no worse. By the middle of the week, though, I had so much trouble getting breath on the way home from work that I had to go straight to see the doctor before even going home. This time, another doctor put me on Advair 250/50 twice daily, with a Proventil inhaler to use when I needed it. He also was careful to say that I didn't have asthma, my RAD was only temporary, and that the Advair and Proventil would keep me breathing okay until it cleared up. That was 4 days ago.
In general, my breathing is fine right when I wake up in the morning, before and after my morning dose of Advair and on the way into work. Not long after I get there, my chest tightens up and I have to work to get enough air most of the day, aside from when I distract myself with something for awhile. The drive home is similar, and after I'm home for a little while it eases to a minor annoyance. During the work day, I use the Proventil with mixed results. Sometimes, it provides relief for a decent time; others, it opens me up a little for a minute or two then I'm back to the hard breathing. During the past weekend, when I was at home most of the time, I either got distracted enough or my breathing was easy enough that I forgot about it entirely for most of the daytime. At night, just before bed, it got bad enough to match to as it is at work, despite the Advair.
I don't know what to do here. From my reading, the Advair is a standard medication for people that really do have asthma, but it seems to be doing me little good, and the Proventil just seems to put a bad taste in my mouth for the most part. I can't find any pattern in my environmental exposure to attempt to locate a trigger, and I've even dropped smoking entirely, all to no avail.
I realize that I'm likely wanting results quicker than I should be expecting them, and I also realize that my upset over the whole situation is likely making it worse overall. Most of all, I just find this whole thing so inexplicable. I've never had any kind of breathing issues before, aside from a bout of bronchitis just after I started smoking, which the Advair treated to great effect. Can someone give me their opinion?