Asthma Attacks

Asthma Attacks

We've had so many good days that I had planned to give up my blog, but then we had some bad days, and then MIL was sick and not sick and the blog got lost.  As things even out in our life this blog will have to change and evolve but I'm going to try to keep it going.  It's been really fun to write.

Anyway, spring has sprung... sort of.  I know that I should be grateful for the lack of tornados in our area but would a ray of sunshine really hurt?  Just the other day I joked that we would be building an ark soon.  Of course, we'll have to get another dog as we only have one, but I have two kids and two hermit crabs so after I get the second dog I'll be set to float away. 

Spring for us always means allergies for both my husband and my son.  My son started on Clartin more than a month ago when pollen levels started to rise.  We monitor his peak flow (the amount of oxygen he breathes out) and just his general sniffles.  Mostly all has been good... until last week.  Hubby came home from work with a simple cold which progressed to a chest cough which immediately jumped to my son.  Crap. 

As you may know in the past a cold equaled a massive asthma attack and trip to the ER.  As my son has gotten older and bigger and as we have become more educated on asthma we have been able to catch several attacks before they happened.  So, in typical fashion we increased Flovent to twice a day and started my son on Albuterol twice a day.  Now, due to an insurance change, we have to get all of our medications mail order.  Of course I have not ordered new puffers of albuterol so I put my child on the nebulizer.
 
My son always has side effects.  Actually, I think everyone always has some side effects.  We had the racing heart beat and the all over shaky boy.  I didn't think much of it.  After 3 days of our standard medication our symptoms went crazy.  First I noticed that his heart beat was WAY too fast.  We sat together, watched tv and waited it out.  Later at dinner he was visibly shaking, fork swinging in the air.  I watched. 

The next day after the morning treatment things came to a head.  After running crazy through the house in a bad way,  (unless your the mom, you cannot distinguish bad running around from good running around) my son melted down yelling about brushing his teeth... still not outside of our range of normal.  We hit wierd when I walked into the bathroom to scold my child and he cowered in the corner and said 'mommy, please don't kill me'. 

I stopped. 

I looked at my son and whispered 'why would you say that?'.  He answered, 'not you, daddy'.  I answered, 'daddy left before you got up, just like every other morning.'  My son started to sob and say 'I don't know, I just don't know.'  At this point, I crossed the floor to him and held him. 

That day I took him off all  medications.  All of them.

My allergist was available to see us 4 days later (perhaps it is time for a new allergist), and could not come up with any real reason for this strange reaction.  According to him, the nebuilizer dispenses more medication that the normal puffer so perhaps this caused the reaction.  My allergist, who I think is very good most of the time, doesn't like to consider a child who may have additional issues like SPD.  How exactly do you figure that into the equation?  Even I'm not sure.  In addition, he can't decide if I'm a crazy mom or one who is on top of it.  You have to admit, both types of mom's look similar.

We've adjust my son's medication to Singular instead of flovent and claritin in hopes that this combination will help prevent attacks better.  Albuterol is still our back up medication based on our success in the past but I am concerned about our next attack.  Will the albuterol work in a more sustained fashion or will we be faced with another breakdown like before?

Only time will tell.