Asthma.
It's looking all too possible that Elias, my precious little honey spilling, Benadryl drinking, climbing, dumping, smiling sunshine, has asthma.
You see, he has this tendency to get croup. Like the slightest sniffle turns into a horrible crouping episode. On one occasion he was actually going a grey-bluish color and I was one second from calling 911 when I got it to stop (cold air, calming the child down). On another occasion, I had to rush him to the E.R. in a horrible blur of traffic and lanes and honking. Over the last year or so, it's happened about five times, which is really quite a lot. Most recently it was right when school started. He got a cold. That morning he woke up with croup. (People bandy about the word croup to mean any bad cough, but it has a technical meaning: swelling of the airway, which taken to its farthest extreme can result in a total inability to breathe.) We got through that episode with the cold air treatment, and went to the doctor later that day as follow up. The doctor said okay, it's a pattern. You'd be wise to take him to a pediatric pulmonologist and get his trachea checked out for structural issues.
We had that appointment on Tuesday. He had just gotten his wonderful new doctor kit from him Grandpa Warren and Grandma Patty (we opened it on Monday night) and so he brought the dr kit with him. It was a very helpful thing during all the waiting in little rooms– he took my blood pressure and unfortunately gave me about 400 shots in the foot and ankle regions (what he could easily reach…)
The doctor listened to the whole situation, examine the healthy and glowing Elias, and then concluded: "Let's see if we can get it to stop happening. Let's put him on the asthma protocol. That way, we can test. First of all, the inhaled steroid will keep his tracheal tissues pretty flat. Then you can use the albuterol (emergency asthma medicine) when he's having an episode. If it's truly croup, it shouldn't work. If it works, it's probably asthma."
I said, "What do you think? Do you think he has asthma? Do you hear anything?"
He said, "Well, there are no smoking guns right now, so to speak… but with a brother with asthma and with this crouping thing, it's looking suspicious. Let's just say I hope not."
He ordered all these x-rays of the chest and throat that day, during which Elias was a total wonderful peach. I mean, he was so cute. He did wiggle a bit, and attempt to continue eating the Luna Nutrition Bar for Women I had dug out of my purse for him, but he didn't cry or struggle. We went home and picked up a whole new set of medication for him. Odd, because at that moment he was so bright and pink and totally robust.
Well, so yesterday was his actual birthday– we've been celebrating bit by bit over the last week. He has had a little nagging cough like the rest of us. We had a pretty vigorous play date after school, and he was running around for about two solid hours. He also inhaled a fair amount of dust, as the children were giving themselves dust baths, and then dousing themselves in the drinking fountain, and then returning for a light breading in dust. On the way home from that, Elias fell asleep in the car, quite an exhausted and filthy little fellow.
That was very late in the day, almost dinner time. After sleeping an hour or so he woke up in this weird state of coughing, not crouping coughing, but just endless coughing. This quickly evolved into a horrible bout– coughing plus crying plus gagging. I couldn't tell if he was going to throw up so I brought him into the bathroom. Then he was coughing/crying/gaging and trying to throw up into the toilet. All this left scant room for inhalation– he was not getting too much air at all. Soon I realized that there was no vomit forthcoming, but his tongue was hanging out, like he was really unable to get air, and he was slobbering as if he had a serious throat blockage. I yelled to Ben to bring the albuterol, and I was again poised to call 911. I got the inhaler on his face and he got some good breaths of it down.
Then, within about two minutes, the whole thing was over. He stopped coughing. He stopped crying. He stopped gagging. He curled up in my arms and went to sleep.
Fact: the albuterol worked in the nick of time. It worked beautifully, immediately. My joy over this– my sense of relief– was slightly overshadowed a bit by the reality. Here we are. It looks like he has asthma.
Such a bummer.
Okay, treatable. Also, it's not definitive, right? Just one episode? It could have been a fluke.
Isaac was three when we diagnosed his asthma for real– (see the hospitalization story in the archives, March 06 , ugh.)
This depresses me no end…
to cheer myself up, I will share a light moment that happened recently.
I don't know if I can explain this and do it justice… picture if you will…
I was sitting in the kitchen. From the other room, out of view, I heard the sounds of struggle. There was grunting… effort… shuffling and scuffling. Then a loud thud as a body hit the floor. I said, "Elias? Are you okay in there?" And he called back, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just puttin' on my goggles."
.