My Life as an Asthma Mom

Sadness causing an asthma attack? Yep, it can. Sunday is one of those days I would like to forget. . Even though we have allergies and asthma , we have 2 kitties (long story….we inherited them from our neighbors). Anyway, my sweet little Siamese Kitty seemed really tired Saturday night. We thought he was spending a little too much time wandering around the neighborhood. He came home and curled up on his favorite chair, nothing unusual about that. Sunday morning, I woke up to see if he wanted breakfast. He didn’t look good. I’ll spare you the details, but we bundled him up on his blankie and rushed him to the closest animal hospital. They suspected leukemia or distemper. But let’s face it, either one is fatal. After $600 in tests, it came back as positive for distemper. The vet told us that Siamese Kitty was really sick, and that of the cats she had seen that had actually survived distemper (very few) were permanently brain damaged and needed special care...

If you ever have to be in the hospital with kids, you may have met a Child Life Specialist. Once they would take one of my kids from the ER to upstairs in Pediatrics, we would meet Child Life Specialist. We got to know Child Life Specialist REALLY well. For those of you that are regular readers, you know that my kids were hospitalized 12 times for asthma when they were little (2 of those were ICU.) The hospital can be a VERY scary place for kids (and for parents!) One of the worst parts is when they try to get an IV in the kid's arm. It can be really hard to do when the kids are dehydrated or their oxygen level is low. The nurses would tell us that their veins weren't very "plump", because their oxygen level was so low, so it was hard to get the IV in.  If any of you have had to get an IV, you know what a super fun experience it can be. Try doing that to a sick kid and have the nurse try to move the IV around to try to get it in the vein just ri...

Ya, I have heard of anaphylaxis, a severe life threatening allergic reaction.     But that would never happen to my kids after allergy shots, right?   That will happen to someone else.  I mean, we ALWAYS waited 30 minutes after allergy shots. You are supposed to wait 30 minutes so that if you have an allergic reaction, the doctor's office can spot it and treat you immediately. All 3 of my kids had 5 year's worth of allergy shots, so we had a LOT of time sitting in Asthma Doc's office. And then anaphylaxis happened  One day, Son #2 was in the hospital (again) with pneumonia.    Hubby came to the hospital for his "shift", and I went home with the other two kids. Son #1 needed his twice a week allergy shots, so we headed up to Asthma Doc's office. It was a Friday night, which meant pizza & video night at our house.    So, we decided to get allergy shots, grab a pizza, and take it back to the hospital so we could have piz...