asthma

Jolli · Oct 28, 2009 7:05PM

Does anyone know about asthma? my eldest had a really bad case of asthma last weekend and we ended up in hospital for the weekend. he's never been quite so bad and he has not been poorly with it at all for over a year. He had a really bad cold which coincided with his preventor running low. We missed the signs - he was fine and then he wasn't. we took him up to the local MIU and there was no dr and they couldn't get hold of one. (it was a saturday afternoon so our dr's surgery was closed and the out of hours doctor was too busy.) the nurse called an ambulance and he was then in all weekend. It was very worrying and after he was released he was ok for a couple of days and then i had to take him to the drs again for more meds and then that evening he was so bad again he had to go in and have another nebuliser.
The thing is I have had a really sleepless week because I keep having to get up and check on him. He never ever wheezes he just goes breathless. In the past if he's had a problem in the night he's woken up coughing and cries out but this week for the first time I've worried that maybe he would not be able to breathe and then just not wake up. I know this sounds paranoid and morbid but I just don't know enough about asthma as to whether this is possible?
It would be really nice to know some facts about it because if there was a way of preventing it happening would be helpful. We also really didn't realise how bad he was so now we are a bit paranoid about when he is a bit breathless about how much he is struggling.
I just wondered if any of you would know about asthma or know where i could go for some facts!

wannababy · Oct 25, 2009 2:26PM

Hi your doctors should have an asthma nurse and your son should go for regular check ups. My daughter was diagnised with asthma when she was 2. like your son, she never wheezes but she coughes constantly! How old is your son? If he hasnt had a check up, ask for one with the ashtma nurse. they will do his peck-flow and stuff like that and maybe change his medication if its not working for him x

Jolli · Oct 25, 2009 2:59PM

He is 4 year old and they haven't done his peak flow. when I was in hospital they asked what his peak flow was and when i said he'd never done one he corrected himself and said it was because he was too young.
I really felt like we were on top of it but this scared us a lot!

wannababy · Oct 28, 2009 4:48PM

yeah i assume some places do it and some dont. they probably go more on symtoms than anything. I would take him back to docs hun and tell them he is still unwell. he is same age as my daughter. does he have a spacer with his inhaler?x

EmilyB · Oct 28, 2009 6:08PM

Asthma's a tricky thing, but here goes! Can i just stress that I'm not an asthma nurse or a doctor, but I've had asthma all my life and for portions of it it's been brittle, so it's something I've had to learn an awful lot about.

I don't want to scare you, but you're absolutely right to be worried because asthma is a scary thing. It's manageable though, and the more you get to know your son's asthma, the less it'll worry you.

The cold is probably what caused the flare up, what usually happens is that his medication won't get down well enough due to his airways being affected by the increased mucus from his cold, so it doesn't work to its best ability and that's when problems can happen. Personally, and this is just me, I always double up my steroid inhaler ever morning and night if I've got a cold, but that's something my doc and I have discussed on many occasions before. It's not uncommon for doctors to ask you to double-up your preventer when you have a cold, so it's best to have more than one in the house. Some surgeries don't like you to do this - I've found insisting really helps!

His peak flow might not be something that needs doing every day, it's usually just something that is checked when you go to the asthma nurse once every 6 months. That's routine, and it should always be done at an asthma check up. It checks lung capacity/strength and is age/height-related, for example mine should be around 470. If it dips further than 85 points below this, I know I'm going to have problems with my asthma. At his age, the doc or asthma nurse will be able to tell you what his peak flow should be, they have children's ones with scales that only go up to about 350 for littlies.

At night, prop him up on pillows. It's best not to lie flat, and certainly if he's been rushed to A&E they won't have let him lie down. It's much harder to breathe when lying flat, so prop him up a bit on pillows so if he does cough, it's draining away instead of straight back down.

Whenever he gets a cold, he's more prone to a chest infection, because he's asthmatic. It'll take him longer to get over colds than other people, because they will affect his airways more. As a result, the only way to prevent this happening in future is to speak to your doc about what he thinks you should do at the first signs of a cold. As I said, my doc always had me double-up my inhaler morning and night, so I was taking 4 doses instead of 2, but you must must must speak to the doc for him to check that doesn't take your boy over his daily allowed amount (not sure what preventer he's on, but as an example you can only take 1600micrograms of becotide a day, so the doc would need to check dosages and make sure it was safe to double them) Whenever he gets a cold he's also more likely to need his reliever inhaler more often too. These aren't things to worry you, as long as he's got enough medication at all times.

Preventing asthma attacks is all about knowing triggers, and a lot of that is trial and error, but colds are usually one!

I hope that helps a bit, let me know if you've got any more questions and I'll do what I can! x x x

Em x x x

Jolli · Oct 28, 2009 6:56PM

Wannababy and Em - thanks you so much! we were caught out a bit by it and we do normally have one on the go and one in the cupboard so when one runs out we got one there and plenty of time to order another, but we hadn't realised that the brown one we were using was running out and i guess they just don't give out full measures when low so was not doing its job properly.
Its almost 2 weeks now and he's still not back to normal. we still mainly at home because its half term. we did go to a friends today and they played outside for about half an hour - nothing too strenuous and not too cold but he came in himself because he was feeling a bit puffy. still the after effects of the cold more than the asthma - just seems to be taking his time to get over it.
The thing that worries me is the possibility of death because I know its rare but an 11 year old boy died recently and it scares the hell out of me. When i went on the asthma organisation there was some posts from people whose children had died and they said that it was such a shock because the asthma was being well-managed and there were no signs and then the child died in an attack that lasted only minutes. I was crying reading it.
he suffers when gets colds but for over a year any colds we've managed to up the preventor as you say and stop any asthma. i think he may have allergies such as cats and hayfever but it seems that sometimes he reacts and sometimes he doesn't.
I'm definately going to try and buy lots of pillows so we can 'sit' him up to sleep when he's poorly.
when he goes to pre-school and starts school soon how should i approach it. i don't want to seem like i'm molly coddling him for something that he rarely suffers from but on the other hand when he does suffer he suffers badly and i'd like to know that if he's out playing somebody somewhere is going to have his inhalor and spacer to hand and that doesn't seem very likely!
I will make an appointment as well to discuss his asthma management plan too. thanks very much xx

Deli3 · Oct 28, 2009 7:05PM

HI
my 16 year old son is asthmatic. |He has been since he as about 10 months (possibly earlier)
He too had brittle asthma and it is very scarey. He was so bad when he was about 4 they tested him for CF..
He was in and out of hospital, sometimes PICU and sometimes just the ward.
He was on ventolin inhalers through the spacer device as and when needed and the orange one which I can't remember its name. We also had a nebuliser at home to give him combivent when he was really unwell. I don't think they allow that now though. I think the policy changed and they say if they are ill enough to be on a neb then they need to be hospital (we have lived out of the UK for 7 yrs so I am not up to date with the latest)
He has had some very scarey times but I made sure he had a ventolin in his pocket, me in my bag, in the car, in OH coat etc...
We had an open bed policy at the hospital so we could just go in without going through the doctors which wasted time.
He was under the consultant and we saw him every few weeks. He also took prednisolone steriod when he was really ill.

It is scarey but once under control and once you know the triggers it is managable.

Chris's main trigger was a cold too. Also dogs, cats, hayfever and dust set him off.

Make an appnt with your asthma nurse and once you get some info off her you will be more confident.

We had a special asthma bag that went everywhere with him just incase.... the spacer and a ventolin were always in there.

best of luck
d xxx

asthma

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