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Just For Kids: Letter from Kurt Grote I’ve never known life without asthma. When I was six months old my parents noticed that I wheezed and coughed in my sleep and took me to my pediatrician for advice. Little did they know that Dr. Balch’s diagnosis that day would become one of the shaping influences in my life. While your body can fight a cold and antibiotics can cure bronchitis, asthma is a disease that many of us will live with forever. Growing up, I was always the “sick kid.” On a good day, my lung function was about 60% of normal; on a bad day, it was awful. I remember my mom setting a bucket next to my bed, as I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with an asthma attack, and cough until I threw up. At school, I was often the last one picked for games during P.E., because everyone knew I would have to sit out most of the game or go to the nurse’s office for my inhaler because I could not breathe. I also missed an average of one day of school per week due to asthma attacks or being sick. Once when I was very sick, everyone in my class was assigned to make me a card to be delivered to my hospital room. It was always difficult to return to school and fit in, even when I was healthy, because I knew that I was permanently labeled the “sick kid.”
I took theophylline year round, several courses of prednisone each year and went through three courses of allergy shots, but despite this aggressive treatment I still found myself in the doctor’s office for a shot of epinephrine every few weeks. Dr. Balch became a close friend not only because the shots left me feeling better, but also because he always greeted me with a smile and genuine interest in my well-being. When I was 12, long before I started swimming, I dressed up as an Olympic Gold Medalist for Halloween. Looking back, it must have been a funny sight: a skinny, asthmatic 12 year-old with braces and glasses dressed up like an Olympian. I wore red, white and blue sweats and gold colored medals I had won in the Academic Decathlon at my elementary school. In my wildest dreams I never imagined that one day I would be wearing USA Olympic Team issued sweats, and that the gold medal draped around my neck would be real. My Olympic journey began very humbly. I was about to begin high school and decided it might be fun to try out for a high school sports team. I had played soccer throughout my childhood, but my lack of talent combined with numerous environmental allergies (including an allergy to grass!) opened my mind to other possibilities. I thought I’d try something new, and my doctor suggested swimming. He explained that the humidity of the air near the surface of the water would soothe my airways, allowing me to exercise and strengthen my lungs. I thought it might be worth considering, but I was worried about making a fool out of myself in a sport I knew nothing about, and more importantly, would I have to wear one of those tiny bathing suits? However, I soon found out that there were no tryouts for the swim team and that there were five times as many girls as boys. My decision was made! Swimming wasn’t easy at first, and sometimes I wondered whether my doctor might have been wrong. It seemed to me at first that the exercise made my symptoms worse rather than better. The low point came when my coach pulled me aside one day and asked me whether I might want to quit the team. I answered “No.” I made the right choice. By the end of the season, my control of my breathing had improved, and I had moved up from the bottom of the team to somewhere in the middle. The next year, I moved up from the middle to the front. In my senior year, I led my team to the county championships as its captain and won the title in the 50 freestyle for San Diego County. It was the first time in my life that, in an athletic arena, I actually felt like I fit in. The momentum of a successful high school career carried me through my first year of swimming at Stanford, the top college swim team in the country. In my junior year, I won my first NCAA title in the 200 breaststroke, and for the first time was faced with the prospect that I, the “sick kid,” was now the best in the USA in my event. In my senior year I swam the “perfect meet,” winning four out of four events that I swam. I was ready to retire - after all, this was more than I had ever dreamed for myself. But the Olympic dream that had been born that Halloween when I was 12 remained. I went to the Olympic trials and made the U.S. Olympic team in three events, the 100 and 200 meters breaststroke and the 400 meters medley relay. Winning a Gold Medal in the 1996 Olympics in the 400 meters medley relay was a dream come true. It has been eleven years since I swam my first lap, and the days when asthma ran my life seem far, far away. My lung function tests regularly place me at 100 - 120% of normal. I am in control of my asthma now. I know when to expect it, and I know how to prevent attacks before they happen. I take a full load of corticosteroid and bronchodilator inhalers for prevention, plus a nasal steroid inhaler and an allergy medication. Occasionally in the spring, I need a course of prednisone, but these episodes are much fewer and farther between than they once were. Since becoming a well-known swimmer, I have been interviewed many times about my experiences at international competitions. But my greatest triumph happened much earlier. It came as a high school freshman, when the odds were stacked against me and I chose to believe in myself rather than to give in to fear and self-doubt. Kurt Grote, is a 1996 Olympic Gold Medalist from the 400 Medley Relay. He is now focused on winning an individual medal at the upcoming 2000 Olympic Games. On top of his busy training schedule, Grote is studying for his medical degree at Stanford. Republished with permission from
Live Well Publications, Inc. |
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© 1996-2008 · All Rights Reserved · American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology |
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