If your DC has asthma

omurray

If your DC has asthma, how were they diagnosed?  Meaning, did your pediatrician or specialist do any particular tests, or take chest x-rays or any of that?  My DS has been diagnosed with asthma after having some wheezing associated with 2 colds within 1 month.  I wouldn't be shocked if DS has asthma because my husband had it as a child, but I feel like this is a bit of a quick diagnosis.  I don't like the idea of him taking steroids on a daily basis (controller meds) when I'm not even 100% sure he has asthma.  So, my questions are:

1.  What did your pedi/specialist do to diagnose your DC with asthma

2.  Does your DC take a daily controller medication, or do you just treat attacks with a rescue medicine?

3.  Do you know if the controller medication is somehow less potent/invasive or something like that?  I understand the idea of preventing attacks, but DS's "attacks" have been pretty minor and I guess I'm wondering why it wouldn't make more sense to just treat him with the steroids when he needs them (assuming that would be infrequent) instead of pumping him full of steroids every day? 

MamiH

Her ped diagnosed her based on her history of chronic coughing/wheezing whenever she got a cold.  She had been on nebulizers several times and a steriod once due to wheezing.  No formal testing.  I have exercise induced-asthma, as well as my sister and my mother.

She is on a pulmicort nebulizer or Q-Var inhaler twice daily as maintenence during cold/flu season.  Off season we only do either the inhaler or the pulmicort neb once daily.  We're starting her on the inhaler because it's faster than the neb, and she's 5-years-old.  She has albuterol or albuterol duo-neb only when sick or wheezing.  The minute I notice a runny nose, we start doing the albuterol nebs as needed.

Honestly since she's started the daily neb, she's a different kid.  She rarely coughs (I guess I never noticed that she always coughed when she ran around outside, rode her bike, etc.) and her "attacks" have gotten fewer and 100% times better than before.  Her ped said the best time to prevent an "attack" is to have the steroid in their system 2 weeks before a cold, so a daily regimen is what we do! 

LisaK2b

DD started getting wheezing when she got a cold and so that Dr mentioned asthma, but I read that they don't make the official diagnosis until they're a little older.  During her cold, she had to do the metered inhaler every 4 hours and then once it got better, every 8 hours.  After about 3 months, Dr wanted to start thinking about prevention, and so now she's on singulair during the spring season because it helps with allergies and exercise induced asthma.  So for singulair has worked, but she does have a cold now with a bad cough (but it doesn't seem like wheezing). 

Sorry I didn't answer all your questions...  I'm still confused with the whole thing since it's only been since this winter...

crazynervous

My ds has probable asthama. they say they won't diagnos it as asthama until after two or something.  He gets horrible wheezing during colds. It will flare up out of no where and a couple times he has had to go to the hospital because the rescue inhaler and nebulizer we have at home couldn't control it.  they haven't done any official tests and he isn't  on any controller meds.  DH did some kind of  breathing test and was diagnosed with it but we really haven't done anything with it because his flares up so infrequently.

penguingrrl

My daughter was diagnosed with asthma a month ago.  She had 3 wheezing incidents in three months, all associated with colds/RSV.  The first landed her in the ER and came close to an admission.  The second she responded to a nebulizer treatment in office, the third she was sent from the office to the hospital via ambulance and spent two days in the hospital.  They diagnosed asthma while at the hospital then confirmed by her pediatrician.  From there we chose to see a pulmonologist because I felt better about speaking with a specialist about it.

For now we're treating as needed and not using a controller med.  We met with a pulmonologist a few weeks  ago and we all agree that for now, because were at the end of virus season, she can try to see how things go without a controller med, but she may need to go on one in the future.  We're hoping to make it seasonal if anything (so only on it for winter, during the height of cold/flu season).

We discussed allergy testing as well, since much asthma is allergy induced, but since she has never shown symptoms of any allergies we're holding off on that for now.  If she starts showing symptoms of allergies we will pursue that route as well.

Our pulmonologist  is pretty active in research and has agreed that with her history (slow onset of attacks, only with viruses) we can definitely avoid a controller med for the time being.  Any time she shows signs of a cold we're supposed to call him, start an oral steroid immediately (which we are to keep with us any time we're out of the house for 6+ hours) and inhaler treatments (which he sees better success with than home nebulizers because the home systems don't make a uniform droplet size so  many are too large to make it into the lungs and it's much easier to get kids to stay still to take an inhaler with a spacer than for an entire breathing treatment).

Good luck!  I have asthma as well, so while I was scared about this diagnosis, I'm at least familiar with treatments.  Now I get to carry two inhalers instead of one.

ppants

My twins were diagnosed with RAD (reactive airway disease) @ 10 mo old.  They were coughing constantly.  We started breathing treatments then.  Now that they're older they officially have asthma.

Our daily meds include pulmicort twice a day, singulair, and zyrtec.  DD also gets brovana in her nebulizer.  If they do get a cold or virus, their coughing can escalate (especially during the night) to literally every two minutes.  That's why were on so many maintance drugs.  Now that they're older we can try to start weaning them down from the number of breathing treatments a day to see if they can tolerate it.

Not trying to be rude, but I recall a previous post about your DC's astma diagnosis.  Why are you so reluctant to do something for it?  I know it sucks for a kid to be on meds, but if they need it then why fight it?  I hope you can work something out.

omurray

Mrs_sexy 

We are doing something about it.  We have seen a specialist and DS has been on a controller med as well as a rescue med.  However, the controller med that we were prescribed had significant side effects and needed to be changed.  Unfortunately, at that point the specialist prescribed something completely inappropriate for my DS (he prescribed a med only FDA approved for children over 12 and my DS is only 3).  After talking to a couple other professionals, we decided we need to find a new specialist as we do not trust this one after that.  I've been doing lots of research on treatment options and just want to ensure that we are not over-medicating.  My DS has only had 2 minor issues, both following colds and both during cold season.  Since then, he's been perfectly fine and it stands to reason that he may not need a controller medicine during a season where colds are not as common (since his issues were cold induced)  We will absolutely make sure that he gets the meds he needs.  We're also doing our due diligence to ensure he's not being overmedicated.  We are hoping to get the referral to a new specialist this week.