Learning to live with Asthma

Tommy's first three years were amazing happy and healthy. We were very grateful for having a child with a genetic disorder that barley got sick. Suddenly, everything changed since December last year when he began to get sick too often. In January this year, he got RSV and our boy had to spend 13 days in the hospital. Before leaving the hospital, we were aware he may get asthma due to the severity of the RSV he got. We were hoping it wouldn't happen, but  life can change in a second! 


Tommy got his first asthma signs since last Monday April 25th at night, but I didn't realize it. He began to cough while sleeping. The asthma symptoms got worse through the week. But we were thinking it was just a cold. But on Sunday night, I noticed Tommy was breathing using his neck and tummy muscles. I knew immediately it could be asthma, so I went to our room for the asthma action plan and I gave him 1 nebulizer as it written in his action plan. It worked for a while! Through the nigh the symptoms were getting worse and he had high fever, so we took to the doctor in the morning. The doctor say: I think he is developing asthma. After she checked his ears, she said: He also has an ear infection. It seems he got the ear infection due to asthma. The guy was feeling miserable! So  she said that we had to do more testing, which is already scheduled for June.


The doctor asked about things that could pull the trigger, I mentioned Tommy's favorite friend, Seumus, a dog.  She just said mmmm! I mentioned to her that he is a hypoalergenic dog. She said every dog produces dander that is in their skin, urine and saliva; which is an asthma trigger. She said that it is better to keep Tommy away from the dog until the testing is done and then they will determinate if it is safe for him. I remembered other things that pull the trigger. My husband left a cologne in the leaving room and Curious Tommy reached it and spray it on him the week he was getting sick. The day before his first asthma sign, we took him to a park and the pollen was too high for allergic and asthmatic people. 


Tommy was  spinning around this evening, then he got ditzy and felt hitting his chin against the tiles, so he got scared and couldn't control the emotion. Then, he stopped breathing! I felt life stop in a second, I didn't know what to do. I picked him up and run to call 911, but when I reached the phone he began to breath so I gave him his asthma medicine and everything when back to normal, except that I still has that moment in my mind. IT WAS SCARY! Today, we were just accepting the idea of him getting asthma and beginning to learn about how to deal with it when Tommy has first asthma attack. 


I still don't know much about asthma. But I will learn as much as I can to help Tommy to live a healthy life with asthma and teach others around him what to do if he has other asthma attack and avoid triggers that cause asthma. There is a possibility the asthma goes away as he gets older, so I am praying for that.