The Blog

just breathe . . .

My youngest has had asthma for years now. It's such a horrible thing to watch when she has a bout with it. It's also something that's so hard to control. You have to stay ahead of it. Well, with winter, comes cold, and with that comes more likeliness of symptoms. We've had our share of emergency room visits via ambulance (not sure how I wasn't medicated to get through that!). Well, after Christmas, and all the excitement, she started having trouble. Then it starts. . . breathing treatments every 4 hours. You have to check her blood oxygenation level to make sure she's getting enough air. She's amazing. We will wake her up at 3am or 4am, (my wife way more than my hibernating body) and she pops out of bed with a smile on her face, stumbles out to the living room, lays on the couch, puts the mask on, and sleeps for 20 minutes while the nebulizer helps open up her lungs. I don't know how she (or my wife) do it.   After the treatmen, she'll be woken up again, back to her room, climb the ladder back to her bed, smiles, kisses, and then back to sleep.  I'll try and stay up for a 2am treatment, because once I'm asleep, it's nearly impossible to wake me up. Well, her numbers are good today, and she seems not to be struggling (we have a number scale for her to gauge how she feels, and she's giving me the thumbs up as well). I'm not always a big believer in things I can't see, but I'll knock on wood or pray to whomever if it will help keep her breathing free and easy.