On Monday, January 2nd, I took Halle into the doctor. She had been up screaming all night and coughing. Of course she was coughing, she is always coughing at night.
Here is some back history of Halle. She has had the worst cough for the last 8 months, some of it going back to summer months. She never gets rid of it. I have had her in the doctor multiple times and it is always croup or bronchitis, over and over again. They put her on a steroid and then she seems a little bit better but that cough that keeps her up all night, never goes away.
Anyway, back to Jan 2nd, my doctor wasn't in because it was considered a "holiday". I went to an office that I know is open all the time. They made me an appt. I figured she had an ear infection with how much she was pulling at her ear through the night.
I got in to see the dr and they had set me up with the only appt available which was with a respiratory specialist. She looked at her ears, both of them were really bad and ready to burst. Great, I thought. Then I asked about her cough and asked if we she had croup again. We got talking more and she said that she never should have been diagnosed with croup over and over again because it was clearly ASTHMA. What? I burst into tears.
We did a breathing treatment and all of the tests said, yes it was asthma. That was why she can never get rid of the cough, it's not croup, it's asthma. We did a lot more talking and analyzing. Long story short, too late for that.... I bought a nebulizer machine and a lot of Albuterol. I started doing 3 treatments a day and she told me that I'd see a difference within 3 days. I found it hard to believe since she hasn't slept for 8 months because of her cough. Sure enough, after 2 days, she ended up sleeping through the night. It was amazing, absolutely amazing. I couldn't believe it.
We went back in for a follow up after a week to see what level of asthma she had. She was worse than intermittent. She had to be put on an inhaler. She takes it twice a day and if she gets over worked or gets a respiratory infection, she has to do nebulizer treatments as well. The inhaler medicine alone, my portion, is $65.
Time went on and that inhaler medicine didn't work after a month, so they had to change it to a different one and she had to add a pill into her medication list. She is doing so much better and I just feel so blessed to finally know what was wrong with her and to finally be able to help her. It was such a blessing that I saw that doctor that day and that we can finally get Halle on the mend. She is a different child, that's for sure.
There are different triggers for everyone's asthma. Hers is anxiety, screaming and I recently found out that cats is added to that list. She had a very bad asthma attack after staying at Amy's and if she had spent one more day there, she would have been in the hospital. Did I mention that Amy has a cat? That was why it was so bad. Oh it was horrible. Then because everything was inflamed from the asthma attack, it caused an ear infection from all of the pressure.
Oh, yes and we found out that Chloee has it too but hers is just intermittent. She only had to do a nebulizer treatment for 5 days and only keep doing it if she gets an infection. She doesn't have to be on any daily medicine and hers is probably just because it is winter and the inversion is bad.
It was a long week, I believe in just that one week, I dropped $530 in machines, medicine and copays. It was a wonderful way to start the new year.
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