Parenting

Anyone have experience w/ Pulmicort?

DS is 20 months old, and we've been cycling on and off with steroids and albuterol for wheezing. It terrifies me when I think about the number of times he's had steroids.  He just got put on pulmicort -- which is an asthma med (breathing treatment) to help prevent wheezing/asthma. The hope is it'll help decrease the frequency of his wheezing spells. He'll have this breathing treatment every day for the next 4 months (until his 2 year well visit) and then we'll decide to continue it or not.   I guess I'm just overwhelmed and sick of breathing treatments. Right now, he's on all three (steroids twice a day, albuterol every 4 hours, and pulmicort once a day).

Do any of you moms have experience with this med? Does it work for your LO? 
Any tricks on surviving breathing treatments?

Re: Anyone have experience w/ Pulmicort?

  • E is prescribed Pulmicort for her asthma, once a day as needed. It really does seem to help her. Worth noting is that we do it combined with the Albuterol so I can't say which is more effective. And the only trick I have to surviving breathing treatments is singing Bob Marley during (it calms her down) and a glass of wine for me afterwards. 

    Good luck. I'm sorry you have to deal with this. It really does suck.  

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  • Yes we did breathing treatments for about a year. DD refused to wear the mask so I had to sit with her and hold it near her face. I usually just gave her some books to look at or turned on the tv for her. Thankfully about a year ago she was able to start the inhalers, which are soooo much better! Hang in there!
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  • We use the nebulizer with pulmicort twice a day from Sept. to May cold season) for DD#3. She doesn't get attacks very often, only when sick, but when she does they are severe. I always read to her when having a treatment. She likes to hold the mask on, not use the strap. She only fought the treatments for the first few months then began to enjoy the individual attention. She started at about 18 months and is 4 now.
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  • We do anything to keep him off the oral steroid.  DS1 is on a different action plan because he doesn't respond to many of the traditional inhalers.  Right now he is really sick so he is getting q-var(maintenance) 2 times a day, atrovent (rescue) every 2-3 hours and albuterol (rescue) if the atrovent fails.  

    Have you gotten an action plan from a pulm yet?  We are on yellow anytime he gets a cold.  With a child that young having a pulm helps a lot even for your own piece of mind.  It is so hard when they can't tell you life sucks right now.  I have had many night of making him sleep without a shirt just to make sure he does't start have retractions.  
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  • Thanks for the tips ladies! Yes, the mask is impossible. He does a lot better with the pipe. For whatever reason, he's just not that into cartoons. I'll definitely give it another try though! We did look at animals in a book this morning and that occupied him briefly. It just broke my heart and when I said "P, we've got to do this." He said, "don't want to."  I've never heard him use that phrase before.

    And thanks for the "he won't love me less for making him cry" reminder. I know it's true.

  • The combo of Pulmicort and Xopenex (you can do them together) was the only thing that worked for bad flare-ups for us. It is AMAZING, but we didn't use it continuously, only for 5 days and then Xopenex daily.

     

    ETA: DD all but outgrew her asthma by 3 and at 5 we have maybe one flare-up a year.

    Bumping under a new SN
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