Riding for Roses

This is one of those articles that I should just fork a separate personal blog for. Jacob was diagnosed last Wednesday with asthma after a second attack of breathing problems in a month. We missed a hospital admission, but not by a whole lot – Dr. Cardwell says we would have been in the ER within 12 hours tops. Jacob basically was moving no air in his left lung by the time I got him to the doctor. It is always interesting to watch how rapidly children can adapt to medical hassles. We’ve seen it repeatedly with Spencer and Jacob is the same way. For the first breathing treatment, he screamed the whole time. Twenty minutes later for the second treatment, he was calm and let me hold him with the mask over his face. At home Wednesday before bed he excitedly said “breathing medicine” and held the mask to his face while I got bedtime stuff ready.

For now, we’ve got it under control and, barring a bad attack, we will be doing three months of regular nebulizer treatments before we go back to the doctor and reevaluate. Live is ongoing medical fun at our house.