Who knows better about asthma, a doctor or a PE teacher?

In today’s story, the PE teacher thinks she knows better and refuses to accept a doctor’s note to excuse a student with asthma from PE.

It really backfired.

Let’s see what happened.

‘Olympians have asthma so that’s no excuse’

I have really bad asthma, I’ve been on ventilator’s and intensive care more times than I can count.

When I was in school (I was about 14) I had a letter from my doctor addressed to my school allowing me out of PE.

I showed this to my PE teacher and she scoffed and said ‘there are Olympians and Marathon runners who have asthma it’s no excuse not to participate’.

He did as the PE teacher said.

I was very anxious at this age and couldn’t really stand up for myself so I just went along and joined the lesson.

We were doing a long distance run (3 miles), I began running, knowing full well how this was going to end.

I knew I wouldn’t make it around the course but she told me too.

After about 20 seconds of running I started wheezing and went back to my teacher to ask if I could get my inhaler from inside.

She refused to let him get his inhaler.

She said no and told me to keep going.

Fast forward another 60 seconds I’ve collapsed on the ground and an ambulance was called (by a different teacher) and I spent two weeks in hospital, most of it in ICU.

When I was finally well enough to go back to school the teacher never ever spoke to me again, and I never did another PE lesson.

That was very cruel not to let the student get his inhaler.

The teacher should’ve been fired.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

It’s different for Olympians.

A PE teacher weighs in.

I hope so too.

Here’s the perspective of another person who has asthma.

This person thinks it should’ve been handled differently.

That PE teacher really messed up!

And that’s putting it mildly.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.