The Life of my Asthmatic son...

Hi everyone! I thought today I would talk to a bit about Luke's asthma, as it's a pretty serious condition for him.

Some of you may or may not remember that when Luke was a baby he had had apnea breathing, which in short means that he would stop breathing for a short period of time (you know no big deal, we were only first time parents-piece of cake). He was almost a full 3 weeks early and weighed 6 lbs 3 ounces but it was enough for his lungs to not be real strong. The day I had him he turned blue in my arms the 2 times I tried to hold him. I remember panicking a little but the nurses and doctors didn't have many ideas for what had happened. I won't go into all the details of that first week as it's just exhausting but the long and short of it all is that after a week in intensive care he was brought home on a heart monitor. Ten years ago it was a box about 8x10 inches and wieghed around 15lbs (more than twice the wieght of Luke). It had 3 cords that would stick onto his chest and stomach with tape and attached to a 50ft cord.
So that was it, here was our baby with a box and 50ft. I remember how happy I was that my mom had bought us a bassinet with wheels and a basket underneath. We would put the box in there and the baby in the baskett and wheel him around the apartment. I remember the cords needed to be put through the tab of the diaper and out the bottom of his clothes (I was a whiz at changing a diaper, anyone who can do the basic diapering and toss in 3 cords to boot is a champ:)

Over the years we've had some bad spells and he's developed allergies to anything on four legs that sheds, air pollens, dust, mold etc...So the allergies are what cause his flare ups along with extreme weather changes (yeah were living in the wrong area for that) Heat is bad and so is extreme cold (seriously where would we go to escape? It's all bad)

We typically seem to have problems in the fall and again in the winter, with the season changes. Two years ago we started a series of doctors visits that seemed to always include chest exrays and head exrays. The conclusion was that his chest and sinus' were blocked (duh!) however it wasn't a sinus infection. So he began a drug called Prednisolone, for flare up's. It's a very good drug with some side affects, one of them being an increase in appetite and another being extra energy (like he needs that). He also started advair diskus (the purple circle thing you see on tv) twice a day (for daily control over his asthma), and singulair (for control over his allergies). All this was very good. He's been able to run around and partake in normal child activities including baseball in the summer. He enjoys bowling league in the school year, ice skating, sledding, and running around all year long. Up until about 8 months ago all was very good. However when I started working at home we ran into insurance problems-there is none. So his doctors have been good about supplying his advair but the singulair is 200$ a month so we switched alavert over the counter and that has proven to be just as good.

We seemed to be doing pretty good keeping control all summer but as the fall weather turns to the colder wintery weather he's been having problems again and I knew our time of not having him be seen was out so I brought him in. Let me tell you what it's like to watch your child actually struggle to breath. Sometimes I wish it was just a small short spell from being knocked out because he was playing too hard, because of course than he'd recover and all would be ok. But when your child has asthms like Luke does, it's very exhausting. He will typically stand up and lean on something instead of sitting just so he can open his air ways. The skin on his chest will stretch over his ribs real tight while he labors to take a normal breath (something most everybody takes for granted). You can hear the wheezing sound as the air travels through his air ways which are inflammed and sore (this is caused from the broncchial infection that causes asthma flare up's). He gets a really rasppy cough that will stress his lungs every time he coughs. Also sleeping at night is so tough he usually has really dark circles under his eyes and has a loss of appetite (in his case thats really not good, he was down to 46.2lbs yesterday!) The whole thing is complete misery. He can take a nebulizer albuterol treatment every 4 hours in times like this but when it gets really bad like it was yesterday he would like to have it every 1-2 hours to be somewhat comfortable. As a mom it's really hard to tell your child they can't have the medicine that you know would bring comfort. So off to the doctor we went. He just finished a week of the Prednisolone last week but the doctor felt a much more intense treatment would help so he's taking that again only now its for 2 weeks. I should mention at this point what a great kid Luke is because this medicine in the worst tasting thing I think any parent could give to a kid. I of course have had a teeny tiny lick of it and that was enough for me to know that I would never want to ingest any. It's kind of like nyquil to the power of 10. Usually he has to take 2 tsp with food which looks like this

however right now its 3 tsp for 4 days, than 2 tsp for 3 days, than down and down it goes until it's done. He's such a trooper. He shoots the whole thing into his mouth and chases it with milk :)

I pray that someday my little man won't have to deal with this anymore. I know that God can heal him and I leave it in his hands. I'm really grateful that there's a medicing he can take to "fix" him for a while. Now it's just a matter of how long this will sustain him.