Asthma Angst

Doctor visits. I hate ’em. I’m thankful for our insurance, but I’m sick of doctors and specialists and therapists. What’s it like to just have healthy kids?!

My poor son has had a bad dry strong cough for nearly two weeks now. This kid is rarely sick with anything solid. He had RSV as a baby and ever since has had sensitive lungs with colds and such. Coughing is routine here. No biggie. But this last round has been so much harsher and different. It’s made him cough to the point he gags. 😦  This kid has thrown up maybe three times in his whole life, so gagging is a much hated and foreign experience for my sensory-challenged boy. I took him to the doc last week and we began experimenting with inhalers because she deemed it asthma.

Only one other time were we told he had asthma, and that was while living in Austin, TX. Since we moved he’s had zero issues…. until now.

So today we go  back for the third time in a week and hopefully we can nip this thing in the bud. The first time I took him, my stupideffingdamn phone GPS took me to the wrong location, and then died on me once I figured out I was in the wrong city.  After only going to the new location one time, I had to do the unthinkable – count on my brain to get me halfway until my phone decided to wake from it’s coma.

did i mention i hate my iphone 4?!

We got there 20 minutes late, and then were sent on our way and told “There’s nothing going on except his vocal chords are irritated, and he might have asthma.”

I filled the script, dropped him off at school, and picked up a coughing kid.

Went back two days later. “Ok, we’ll give him a steroid inhaler but he can only take it 2x/day.”

For days and days it seemed to help. This morning he wakes up with the constant cough and gagging again.

Now he gets to get pulled out and miss even more class time so I can hopefully and finally resolve what is going on. At what point do you demand an X-Ray? Would that even show anything ?! I have no idea ! The whole point is that i’m not the doctor. I take him to the professionals to yes, do the most minimally invasive treatment, but it has to actually treat. Solve the problem, please. Meanwhile the teacher is telling me, “He is coughing a lot in class…”

Really? Ya think? I’m trying to fix it !

Driving home from therapy last night, he begins coughing and I just laughed and asked, “Are you getting sick and tired of people asking, ‘Are you okaaaaay??’ ?”

“Yes.”

And we were able to laugh about all the shirts he wants made. “Yes I know i’m coughing. Yes, i’m ok.”

“Thank you for asking, I’m fine.”

“I know i’m coughing. I can’t really help it.”

God bless a sense of humor. Now, I need to google “funny asthma shirts”

And I wont even bring up the terror and horror at all the scary diseases running seemingly rampant lately. The whole enterovirus 68 thing is about to cause panic with my husband and I. I can’t even start on the Ebola diatribe. I have a traveling husband who takes god knows how many planes every month and sleeps in hotels and takes cabs while away on business.

It’s ridiculous when you are hoping the illness you have is a severe flu and not something worse. When you are thankful to “only” have food poisoning or Chicken Pox, times are tough.