Colds and Asthma

Well, we had quite the scare with Addison last Thursday! At 4am (rather than 7:30am), she woke up with a cold. I'm thinking "Great...she hasn't had a cold in 3 weeks, she must be overdue!" As a good mom that doesn't bring her child to daycare to spread germs, I kept her home with me that day. At about 3pm, I noticed that she was breathing heavy and starting to wheeze. I called Adam after an hour or so and told him I wanted to bring her in to get checked. I was worried the wheezing may have been the start of pneumonia or RSV.

So, off Adam and I went with Miss Addison to urgent care. When we got there, the nurse was concerned with the wheezing as her breathing could be heard from across the room. She took her pulse ox and found that it was in the low 90's. She immediately started her on a nebulizer treatment to help calm her breathing. The doctor then met with us and decided she needed a chest x-ray to confirm whether or not we were looking at pneumonia or some other kind of lung infection. The x-rays came back clear, so he determined that she was having an asthma attack. After a second nebulizer treatment, the doctor met with us again to discuss with us the risks of asthma and what to look for in the future. They gave us a nebulizer machine to bring home with us as well as a prescription for prednisone with the hopes that her bronchial tubes would become less contracted an allow her to breathe better.

When we got home, we fed her and tried to give her the prednisone. To our dismay, she ended up puking EVERYWHERE! The quantity of the dosage he gave us was absolutely ridiculous. He expected us to give her 15mL of medicine at one time, which is the equivalent of 3 syringes full...a little much if you ask me. The next morning, I made an appointment with her regular doctor to lower the quantity. I had every hope that a smaller amount would be easier on the baby...I was VERY wrong!!! I gave her a bottle and got no more than .25mL in her mouth before she gagged and puked EVERYWHERE again! I quickly called the doctor to inform her that prednisone orally was probably not going to work. All the while, Addison still wasn't breathing well even with the nebulizer treatments, so I knew she needed the medicine. The doctor agreed that I could bring her back in to get a prednisone injection that would begin working immediately. Sure enough, after 3 trips to the doctor in less than 24 hours, the prednisone injection worked! YIPPEE!!! Addison made a complete 180 within an hour after the injection.

Who knows if this bout with asthma is just the beginning or if she'll never have an attack again. I guess we'll see...especially the next time she gets a cold or allergy season hits! There's no way of knowing for sure what her triggers are, but you can bet we'll have the nebulizer on standby if we ever catch her wheezing again!