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In 1991, seventeen-year-old Cathy Freeman was training in Darwin’s searing summer heat, preparing for the World Championships. After a workout, she started experiencing unusual shortness of breath, chest tightness and wheeziness. Something felt wrong, but she had no idea what it was.
“I recall it feeling very different to the normal post fatigue I’d become accustomed to,” Cathy says. “It was just different.”
It would be another twelve years before she had an answer.
An Olympic champion, undiagnosed
“As a professional athlete, on many occasions I may have interpreted breathlessness as being unfit and out of shape,” she says. “I had no clue that I may have been experiencing asthma.”
The symptoms returned in 1997 at the World Championships in Athens. The same unusual shortness of breath and chest tightness, this time in 40-degree heat and heavy pollution. Again, she managed to get her breathing under control. Again, she carried on without a diagnosis.
A diagnosis at 31, and a much bigger problem
It wasn’t until 2003, after retiring from professional sport and settling back in Melbourne, that extensive testing finally confirmed what her doctors had long suspected: Cathy had asthma.
“It’s scary to think what might have happened to me all those years I lived without proper asthma diagnosis and treatment,” she says.
Her experience is far from unique. One in five Australian women live with asthma.1 Women make up 61% of all adults with asthma,2 and are twice as likely to die from it as men.3 Yet asthma remains largely invisible in flagship women’s health initiatives, Medicare health assessments and public discourse.
Asthma doesn’t stay the same across a woman’s life, either. Hormonal changes at puberty, pregnancy and menopause can all change how it affects you,4,5,6 and most women with asthma don’t have an up-to-date asthma action plan.1
Life after diagnosis
Since her diagnosis, Cathy’s health has transformed. “My health has improved significantly because one, power is knowledge,” she says. She now manages her asthma daily with a prescribed medical protocol and maintains close relationships with her GP and respiratory specialist.
But the memory of what it felt like before diagnosis stays with her.
“I know what it feels like to fight for air and to struggle to breathe because of asthma,” she says. “It’s terrifying, it’s exhausting and it’s a traumatic experience.”
Cathy’s message to women
Cathy’s advice is direct: “Take your asthma very, very seriously. Going undiagnosed is one danger. But when you are diagnosed, please, please take it seriously. Make sure you follow your medical protocols and be aware of what your triggers are.”
What needs to change
Cathy is lending her voice to Asthma Australia’s ‘She Needs to Breathe’ campaign, launched at Parliament House in Canberra, calling on the Australian Government to:
- Put asthma on the Women’s Health agenda
- Fix the Medicare health check gap for women
“Together we can improve asthma outcomes for Australian women across the life course,” she says. “And together we can save lives.”
References
- Reddel H, . The burden of asthma in Australian women.. 2024 National Breathlessness Survey . Australian Centre for Airways Disease Monitoring (ACAM), Woolcock Institute of Medical Research. Macquarie University, Sydney. Commissioned by Asthma Australia
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Asthma, National Health Survey, latest release. www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/health-conditions-and-risks/asthma/latest-release
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Causes of Death, Australia, 2024. www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/causes-death-australia/2024
- Almqvist C, Worm M, Leynaert B. Impact of gender on asthma in childhood and adolescence: a GALEN review. Allergy, 2008;63(1):47–57.
- Fuseini H, Newcomb DC. Mechanisms driving gender differences in asthma. Current Allergy and Asthma Reports, 2017;17(3):19.
- Shah R, Newcomb DC. Sex bias in asthma prevalence and pathogenesis. Frontiers in Immunology, 2018;9:2997.
