Asthma and Asher

We were hoping Asher wouldn't develop the dreaded symptoms that lead to an asthma diagnosis.  And while he does not have an official diagnosis of asthma yet, in the past month he's had two asthma attacks.  His first was mid January which landed us in the doctors office four times that week, an oral steroid, and of course breathing treatments to manage his breathing. 

The second occurred February 13, and landed him in the ER.  He arrived with a pulse ox level of about 93, and they immediately gave him a dose Prednisolone and ordered three rounds of two Albuterol respules and one Atrovent respule.  That's a heck of a lot of medicine!  It did the trick to get him out of the woods though, for a while anyway.  We left the ER with instructions to continue treatments every three hours.  We followed up at his pedi (saw Dr Poppy this time) that afternoon.  By the time we got there, he was laboring pretty hard again.  So after two treatments at the doctor's office, he'd made enough progress that we (thankfully) didn't have to return to the ER.  We were under orders to continue treatments every 3 hours while he was awake and every 4-6 if he was sleeping well.  The following morning we followed up again with Dr Poppy, and were very thankful to see that he'd made some good progress overnight.  Whew!

If this happens again, we'll look into preventatives. And likely look up our trusty pulmonologist, Dr. Copenhaver.  Waiting is the hardest thing.  I feel like we're waiting for the other shoe to drop right now.  And while I really hope it's not going to, if it is, I hope it happens soon so we can get it over and done with.  Then I can figure out the new normal, and not this weird in between.