| Product: |
My Experience of Asthma |
| Date: |
17/03/05 (1177 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: She still leads a near enough normal life .
Disadvantages: The wheezing, nebulisers , ........
Did you know that one in ten children in the UK have asthma?That's a total of 1.1 million youngsters who at times struggle to fill their lungs with air. It's an hereditary condition, which means if one parent has a history of asthma in their family, their child has a good chance of developing the condition, but if both parents have the history then the child has a very high chance of developing it. Now I had severe asthma as a child, and now suffer from chronic bronchitis, and although my husband doesn't have asthma, his sister does, and this combined history meant that our children had a very high chance of developing the condition. I guess we were unlucky, in out of four children three have asthma, and two of them have it in a very severe form.
Now it would be too much to tell you about all three of them, so I'm going to tell you about my youngest Ashleigh, who has had the symptoms of asthma since she was six weeks old.
~~~The first attack~~~
When Ashleigh was born she was a perfect wonderful baby, so contented and settled, easy to feed, even easier to wind, it was such a relief (If you've read any of my other reviews you'll know her older brother has difficulties). But when she was 6 weeks old she caught a cold, suddenly she found feeding difficult, and I could hear a distinct wheeze to her breathing, having older children with asthma I knew what the signs were and was thinking “Oh great not again”. Then she started coughing so much she was sick, and lovely sick it was too, pints of mucus mixed with the little bit of milk she'd actually managed to actually drink.
So we took her to the doctor for an emergency appointment, to be told that they don't diagnose asthma at such a young age, but it did look like she was developing it. Basically she was given no help to breathe, and I ended up taking her home and coping with it the best we could. (If your asthmatic child has a lot of mucus, steam works wonders).
~~~The first hospital admission~~~
These attacks came and went over the next 9 months, and we moved house and therefore saw a new doctor. Then one night (why are the worst attacks always at night) her condition seriously deteriorated over the space of an hour, and she became floppy and disinterested in everything and everyone around her. We knew it was really serious this time, and took her straight to the Emergency department, where she was immediately given a nebuliser (I'll explain a nebuliser later) which didn't really help her much, so she was sent to the children's ward, where she was given 2 hourly nebulisers and put on oxygen. This was a scary time, but eventually, with the help of steroids and antibiotics she got over the infection that was causing the problems and received the diagnosis of Asthma.
Eventually we were allowed to take her home, armed with two different types of inhaler, nebules to use in our nebuliser at home and some steroid tablets that she was to take in ever decreasing doses.
~~~The Happy Wheezer~~~
Ashleigh became a regular both at the doctors surgery and the children's ward and was known as a “happy wheezer”, what this meant was that because she had never known a time when she didn't wheeze she just carried on as any other child would, even when she actually needed oxygen. Asthma and nebulisers had just become a part of her life, from the age of 10 months upwards she has had nebulisers twice a day to help control her asthma, and upto six times a day when she's unwell. Being able to give her these at home, means that we can keep her out of hospital as much as possible, although it does mean the responsibility falls on us to decide when enough is enough. We also have a supply of steroid tablets that we can start her on, when things start to get out of control.
Oh and she has open access to the children's ward, so if we can't control things at home, we can get her straight to the treatment she needs.
~~~The Wheezer at school~~~
Ashleigh is now at school, and for the most part she is exactly like every other child there, hey lots of kids in her class have asthma. The trouble is very few have it as severely as she does, which is something the teachers tend to forget. She's normally gunked up and coughing constantly from October until March and often her teachers think she should be at home. In fact she's just gone to school today, with a cough that would keep most children home, but not my Ash, as I've said before she's just used to being like this. As she's got older though, she has started to be able to say when things are worse than usual, and she really does need to stay at home, so we're starting to trust her judgement. If Ashleigh says she's to ill to go to school, then she's genuinely too ill.
~~~Treatments~~~
There are lots of different treatments for asthma, so I'm only going to tell you about the ones we've tried for Ashleigh.
-Inhalers-
Ashleigh has a Ventolin inhaler, to give her relief from an attack, when she's not at home. This is a spray, that she needs to breathe in. Now in common with most children, she finds that she can't co-ordinate breathing and pressing the inhaler, so she uses an aerochamber. An aerochamber is like a tube, with facemask at one end and a hole for the inhaler at the other. When the ventolin is sprayed it mixes with the air in the tube and then the child breathes it in. It's much easier for her to use and she's being doing it herself since she was about three.
-Nebulisers-
A nebuliser is basically a machine that pumps a fine mist of which ever drug that you've put in it into a face mask, so the child can breathe it in. Ashleigh takes two different drugs this way, ventolin, and pulmicort (which helps reduce the frequency of attacks). It takes about 10 minutes for it to run, and it's a good idea to sit with your child and keep them amused while it's running, it must by very scary to start with. It's also important to give your child a drink and wash their face after using it, otherwise they might get a rash.
-Steroids-
Ashleigh takes steroid tablets when her asthma is really bad, and these help reduce the swelling in the lining of the lungs. They work brilliantly, and we normally see a positive response within 8 hours, but they have side affects, including aggression.
~~~All about asthma~~~
Now I've told you how asthma affects Ashleigh I'm going to fog your mind with some medical blurb about what asthma actually is :
Asthma is a condition that affects the airways, the small tubes that carry air in and out of the lungs. During an asthma attack, the airways will contract (get smaller), the muscles around them will get tighter and their linings will get inflamed (swell up), and sometimes mucus will start to collect all of this will make it more difficult to breathe.
Symptoms wary from child to child but may include :
Coughs or wheezing particularly at night, in the cold or after exercise.
A cough that won't go away or keeps coming back
Finding it difficult to breathe and feeling breathless.
Complaining of having a tight feeling in their chest or a sore tummy
Feeling tired, not running around as much as usual, needing to be carried a lot.
~~~What to do if your child has an attack~~~
Firstly stay calm, if your child sees you panicking they're like to start doing the same and this will make the attack worse. If they have medication give it to them, then sit with them for at least 5 minutes to see if it's worked. Have a look at their tummy, I know this sounds silly but I'll explain why. When a child is in severe respiratory distress, instead of their chest going up and down, their tummy will, and you'll see the ribs clearly standing out, if you see this get your child seen by a doctor as soon as possible as it means they are really are struggling.
If the medication hasn't worked it maybe that they need more help, in this case I would suggest taking them to hospital as soon as.
~~~Final words~~~
I've lived with asthma all my life, and I've managed to do everything I want. It's heartbreaking watching Ashleigh struggle for breath, but in a strange way I think it's made her stronger. She knows what her limits are and is always trying to push herself that little bit further, and enjoys all kinds of physical activity during her well periods. For many children, asthma is just an inconvenience, but for Ashleigh it has at times been life-threatening, and yet if you looked at her playing with her friends you wouldn't really know.
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