Making Peace with Asthma

Memorial Day 2006
It started out as a fantastic day. Parades, outdoor play, a healthy  2 year old boy.  By noon, Nick was coughing, by 3 o'clock he was coughing a lot and by 5 o'clock, I was calling the doctor.  I was admittedly naive about asthma so when the nurse was asking questions, I couldn't really answer them.  She finally asked that I put the phone to him so she could listen to him breathe.  By 5:30, I was taking him to the ER.  

This WAS my first rodeo at the ER with my child.  Blood work, breathing treatment, prednisone, x-rays.... exhausting for a mom and her child.  The diagnosis- Asthma.  We were sent home with a handful of scripts and told to follow up with the pediatrician.  While signing the discharge papers, I was told that the prednisone may make him irritable and/or make him hyper.  That might have been the understatement of the century, kind of like when the doctor says you might feel a "little pinch."  He was fun at first on the medicine, wired, but fun.

For the past 7 years, we've been figuring out/managing his asthma.  At first, I  admit, I wasn't consistent with his medications.  I let coughs go untreated for too long.  I let symptoms go unnoticed hoping the asthma would go away.  It hasn't.  So now I'm making peace with it.  Remember-Breathing...Good.  Asthma flair up....not so much.

So here's what I've learned over the past 7 years (primarily through trial and error and sometimes epic fails):

• Asthma is quick to worsen. If I don't act quickly with his albuterol, we will be at the ER within in a day
• His maintenance inhaler is a must.
• I have a love/hate relationship with Prednisone. Five days of extreme irritability is almost too much to handle. 
• A simple cough will send me into mommy-panic-mode.
• Everyone has an opinion on steroid use. Here's my take on it- good breathing is a beautiful sound and if takes steroids to get us to that point, I'm all in.
• Extreme cold to extreme warm is great for our mood but, the devil for his asthma.  It almost guarantees some sort of intervention.
• My copay and 30 minute commute to the doctor's office for them to say 'Nope, he's fine. It's just a virus.' is worth every minute and every penny.
• Nick will hate every morning reminder to take his inhaler.
• He will also learn to use asthma as an excuse when he loses a race against his sister.    

Something is working though.... We have not had any ER visits in almost 2 years.  Yay! I recently started using a simple Peak Flow Meter for him.  He averages about 150 on what I call 'a good lung day' (average for a kid his age is 220, I think).  It's just another tool for me to tell how well he is doing.  If he falls below a certain number, we up his inhaler.  We follow up with the allergist annually and his pediatrician every 6 months and revamp his Asthma Action Plan.

Daily we work together to make peace with asthma.  What means for him and what it doesn't.  It just another thing we incorporate into our crazy, normal life.