asthma/reactive airway

mamantraining

My son may have either of these and we are waiting for a pulmonologist appointment. He was hospitalized once for pneumonia and after a few months he caught a virus and had difficulty breathing as a result. We are in the middle of albuterol treatments to try to get him healthy again. Anyone dealt with anything similar and what should we expect when we.see the specialist?

CCinLove

My son has never been hospitalized, but he has had several incidents that look a lot like asthma attacks.  The Pulmonologist was pretty reluctant to diagnose him with Asthma (he's 5).  He wrote up a report specifying that he was not diagnosing Asthma, but he was prescribed medication and a rescue inhaler just as if he had received the diagnosis.  My son had another attack like incident when we travelled out of state recently, so I was planning to make another appointment.  I want to know more about why he doesn't have a diagnosis.  I don't know if it's because they like to wait until a certain age to make the call, or if they need more evidence before they diagnose.  I was misdiagnosed with Asthma, and it had horrible repercussions for me.  I was actually denied insurance even though I don't actually have it.

ppants

My b/g twins were diagnosed with RAD at 10 mo old.  We had to start breathing treatments then.  They were both on pulmicort twice a day.  If they got a cold, we'd usally have to bump it up to 3x/day.  We got to the point that the pedi felt like we had to give oral prednisone too often and he referred us to an astma/allergy dr when they were 2.5 yrs old.

The asthma dr did a blood draw and later we had to do skin patch allergy testing.  They both began singulair soon after and DD had to also have an additional med through her nebulizer.  Both kids are in zyrtec year round also.  They are now 8.5 yrs old.  DS doesn't use his daily inhaler at all.  DD is down to one puff/day.  They are both on singulair and zyrtec still. 

Thankfully, their asthma has been well controlled and we've not had any attacks or ER visits related to it.  I hope your DS is better soon!

macchiatto

My NT twin has asthma. He was hospitalized for pneumonia at 10m and has been to the ER for it I think twice since then. It has gotten better as he's gotten older, and improved a lot after he started on daily Singulair and Qvar (and Nasonex). We did switch from albuterol to xopenex because his behavior and mood were so awful on albuterol (mad at the world). He has both an inhaler with spacer and a nebulizer; we didn't get the neb till he was almost 5 and I wish we'd gotten it earlier just to have as an option. He mostly sees an allergist for it, but he did see a pulmonologist once when we suspected exercise-induced asthma. His asthma tends to be triggered by exercise, sickness, cold air and sometimes mold (which he's allergic to).

abs05

My daughter has illness/allergy induced asthma.  Basically the second she gets a cold she is at risk for an asthma attack. For her it strikes mainly at night. She takes an antihistamine, Singulair, and Flonase daily to help control her nasal symptoms.  We also now have an inhaler with spacer (albuterol) that we use the moment a cough starts.  This helps open up her airways so she can sleep at night.  Without the inhaler she will just cough, and cough, and cough some more.  For weeks. 

We will likely start allergy shots soon as colds automatically turn into sinus infections. 

mamantraining

Thanks everyone. Any alternatives to albuterol? DS turns into an overly hyper child on it, which is a problem esp at night. He was up until midnight last night.

ppants

We used pulmicort as our daily med and only had to give albuterol for flare ups.  Xopenex is another option for daily use.

macchiatto

mamantraining said:

Thanks everyone. Any alternatives to albuterol? DS turns into an overly hyper child on it, which is a problem esp at night. He was up until midnight last night.

See my post further up in the thread. My son also had problems with albuterol so we switched to xopenex as his rescue inhaler. It doesn't seem to work quite as well but it does the job most of the time, and we have albuterol on hand also as an option if he needs something stronger.

Bat_Ish_Crazy

My daughter was diagnosed with RAD.  Pulmo is reluctant to diagnose asthma at this time (she's 3), but I'm confident that's where we're headed.  Strong family history of asthma on DHs side & she is also peanut allergic, so the chances are higher.

She is currently on QVAR twice daily. Albuterol or Xopenex breathing treatments for flare ups - I honestly can't tell if the treatments make a difference & have never been able to parse out if her attitude problems are the result of her being sick or the result of using these medicines. 

She also uses Flonase daily.  We just switched from Nasonex to save some money, but may switch back.  I don't think Flonase is as effective. 

We've always given Zyrtec for seasonal allergies, but we've recently decided to try some other options because it doesn't seem to be doing anything for her.  The doc prescribed Singulair, but I'm not happy with the possible side effects (mood swings), so we are going to try Claritin first.

Good luck!  When we started treating the RAD, it was like getting a whole new kid!