Adrian
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Needing advice
I am becoming more concerned that my son has developed asthma. He caught croup back in April, and hasn't been the same since. He will have episodes of wheezing. It gets worse when he is upset. Of course, these things always come to my attention on the weekends. I will be calling his doctor first thing Monday. It will be the third time I have taken him to the doctor for this. I know there are some of you who read my blog who have experience with children who have asthma. I tried giving him a breathing treatment about 15 minutes ago, and probably made it worse. He fought me the whole time. He does not want something like that in his face. It also makes me wonder if he does have asthma what I'm going to do to treat it. No breathing treatments... oral steroids work for the short term. Anyway, it wouldn't really surprise me if he does have asthma. Of course, no one in my family has it, but no one on my side has severe food allergies either. But, since he has allergies the thoughts of having asthma just don't surprise me. I just want to get it diagnosed before it gets scarier, so I can treat it. So, anyone out there have advice about this?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My son was diagnosed with asthma at 6 months... He has been on breathing treatments since then. It may take some time to find out what meds, and how often the meds are taken, work best for him. My son is on Albuterol via nebulizer twice a day, and QVar (a controller medication) via inhaler twice a day. We also have an Albuterol inhaler that we carry with us.
ReplyDeleteAsk your pediatrician for a referral to a pulmonologist.
Even if your son is screaming/freaking out when you give him a nebulizer treatment, I think that it is still important to give him the treatment. There were many times that we had to hold my son down, let him scream, and still get the treatment. Eventually my son stopped screaming. And, as of about 6 months ago, all of a sudden one day, he sits by himself, holds the mask to his face, and easily does a treatment.
My biggest advice is to see a pulmonologist as soon as you can. Our pulmonologist has been amazing, and with her help, my son's asthma is under control.
Oh, also-- His treatment plan may be really intense at first-- We were giving my son treatments every 3-4 hours. By now, we were hoping that he would be off treatments or only have to have one treatment today, but I don't think that this is going to happen. I am just happy that his breathing is stable, and that we have found treatments and a routine that work for him.
ReplyDeleteAlso-- Certain things can make a child's asthma worse. For instance, my son's asthma is worse in hotter weather. When we moved from Michigan to Florida, it got really bad really quick, and he actually ended up in the ICU for a few days. I think this could have been avoided if we were seeing a pulmonologist sooner, and if we had been more aware of the signs and better prepared (Taking his nebulizer on short vacations, being sure to ALWAYS have his inhaler on us, even if we don't think we'll need it).
Also-- Meds like albuterol can make a child hyper! I really don't care about this though, at least my son can breathe!
Oh-- I also put on a movie that my son really likes during his treatments.
ReplyDelete(LOL Ok, sorry for all of the comments).
No, thank you for the comments! They are helpful! I'm not sure if he does have asthma or not, but something isn't right! Saturday was a bad day for it, but today was just fine. We were also at the zoo today for a few hours, and it was in the 90s outside, and he did just fine. So I'm not sure about everything yet, but I need to get him checked out!
ReplyDeleteYeah-- When we moved to Florida, our Dr. told us that it might clear up or get worse-- It got worse. Yeah, I would def. see a Pulmnologist, who can make a good diagnosis!
ReplyDelete