‘You Become a Person You Never Thought You’d Be’

Dana Sjoblom spent months scouting out the perfect private elementary school for her only child, Chelsea. Their concern wasn’t sports or curriculum or class size.

It was simply the only school the Sjobloms could find near their West Hills home in the San Fernando Valley that promised to keep a compact breathing machine ready for emergencies.

To Chelsea, a petite, ponytailed 13-year-old, it’s a matter of life and death. After running a lap at school when she was 8, she started to wheeze. She asked the teacher if she could go inside and take her medicine. The teacher told her to wait until class was over.

Chelsea’s upper lip was turning blue and she was weak-kneed when a young schoolmate walked her to the office. After that, her allergist told the well-behaved Chelsea to disobey adults--or she might die following their misguided advice about asthma.

“We had three doctors tell us people don’t die of asthma until we finally found one that would refer us to an allergist,” said Dana Sjoblom, who owns an X-ray service business in Chatsworth. “You become a person you never thought you’d be. You have to be aggressive because people act like asthma is just a cold.”

Olive trees and half a dozen other things bring on the girl’s attacks. Chelsea’s mother wonders whether she was exposed to something while pregnant that caused the asthma. Chelsea’s father frets about the cigarettes he didn’t give up until his daughter’s first attack at age 2.

“Every class she’s been in says they have the highest number of asthma kids they ever had,” Dana Sjoblom said. “It makes me wonder. What is going on?”