An Asthmatic Weekend

Sometimes being a mom is hard, and most of the time it's hard to explain exactly why being a mom is hard. Having a sick kid can be hard, and I don't feel like there's a lot of explaining that goes into that.

On Thursday Ike had a fever, but he didn't seem to have any other symptoms. In the evening his breathing was really wheezy. It was so loud that at one point it sounded like the low, rhythmic hum of the washing machine. Except the washing machine wasn't on. I asked Eric what the sound was, and he told me it was Ike's breathing. I immediately called the pediatrician's office, and the nurse said to bring him into the after hours clinic.

He appeared to have a cold that was agitating his asthma. Thankfully, his oxygen level was very high, but the P.A. had him do a breathing treatment in the office. It was horrible. He screamed and fought the whole time. He is strong. After checking out a nebulizer and then going to pick up the vials of medicine to put into the machine we went home and he went straight to bed without a fight.

We did two more breathing treatments in the night. By the last one he was so feverish and tired that he hardly fought at all.

On Friday morning he was doing much better. His fever was finally gone. (I had been regularly treating it with ibuprofen, but it would just not relent.) He was even breathing pretty well. At about 10 I noticed his breathing was pretty loud again. It didn't seem to bother him, but I knew we needed to do a nebulizer treatment.

This time I sat him down and read him several books. He did incredibly well and didn't fight at all. Half an hour later, though, his breathing was still really loud. I called the doctor's office again, and again the nurse said I needed to bring him in right away.*

Again, his oxygen level was quite high, so it was clear that even though his asthma was acting up, it wasn't having dangerous consequences. The doctor was concerned that his breathing was so loud when we had just done a treatment about an hour before. So we did another treatment in the office. Again, Ike didn't fight at all. It was such a breeze compared to the time the night before. The doctor came in and listened again and decided to prescribe an oral steroid, mostly to prevent his asthma from getting worse.

Unfortunately, the steroid tastes pretty awful, and Ike fights it will all his might (which is a lot). Only six more doses to go!

And that's what has made parenting hard this weekend. On the up-side, nobody has been hospitalized, and we didn't have to buy a nebulizer. (The pediatrician's office loaned us one.)

*Three cheers for Felix who had to be woken from a nap to go to the doctor's office. Normally I feed him right when he wakes up, but we didn't have time. I ended up not having time to feed him until we got back home. He was a serious champ about the whole thing.