My Life as an Asthma Mom

    Are y'all sick of self isolation? Luckily, all my kids are now adults. The two youngest are in college but they are hanging out at the house. They are NOT about to keep working in their service jobs.  Son #2 refuses to go to work (luckily his boss is understanding.)  And Kitty's chain of theaters shut down and fired all employees nationwide, so she is out of a job. I told both of them that we will support them financially until it's safe for them to be out in public. When they were younger, they were hospitalized 12 times (and this was just the normal complications of asthma. )  If any of my 3 kids with asthma get Coronavirus (COVID19), they'll be admitted to the hospital again. Come to think of it, so will I. I had a nasty case of influenza 2 years ago and came close to being admitted.  I hate asthma. What can we all doing to keep busy? The Hubby and I are working from home and luckily we each have our own offices.  ...

  For those worried about asthma and COVID 19 (Coronavirus), this is the most updated info from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) as of March 16th, 2020. I enlarged this so you can read it (hopefully), but the most important thing I read was: "COVID-19 can affect your respiratory tract (nose, throat, lungs), cause an asthma attack, and possibly lead to pneumonia an acute respiratory distress." Of the 12 hospitalizations for daughter Kitty and Son #2, almost all of them were due to pneumonia. I can't begin to describe how terrifying that was for our whole family. My kids would usually spend 3 days in the hospital, and then were discharged to come home on oxygen. They would be on oxygen for another week, and it was a long, slow recovery. They were usually weak and struggled to do anything other than watch videos or play video games. Those with asthma are ALWAYS hit harder with any respiratory disease (the cold, the flu, etc.) But now even hea...

It's March, and instead of thinking about March madness, we are worried about asthma supplies. My friends are all posting pictures of empty store shelves. People are panicked about running out of food and water (and toilet paper!)  I'm not sure if people realize that you can still turn on the tap and water will come out? This isn't a natural disaster like a tornado or hurricane - infrastructure will still work!  My worry is running out of asthma meds for the nebulizer.   With a family of 5, 4 of whom have asthma, we take precautions around sick people, avoid germs, and stock up on asthma meds ALL THE TIME! Welcome to our world! We are in that small percentage of people who get REALLY sick with respiratory infections. In fact, my kids have been in the hospital 12 times. Thanks asthma.  For the past 20 years, we have used alcohol wipes, hand sanitizer and hand wipes. We wash our hands so often that we run through a LOT of soap. We w...

For those of you who are regular readers, you know that we are a family of 5, all of whom have allergies and 4 of us have asthma. We just bought our 3rd house a couple of years ago. I was excited to see wood floors on part of the main level, but the upstairs (where the master bedroom is) has deep, lush carpet.  It's like buttah  Walking barefoot on that carpet is amazing. But - I know that the deep, lush carpet also traps a lot of dust and allergens. Our 1st and 2nd home were historic homes with original wood floors. (Fun fact: back in the 1950's, many homes used surplus wood from WW II quonset huts. Carpet was a luxury and came later.) The first thing we did when we bought our historic homes was to tear out all of the carpet, pad, and tack strips and refinish the wood floors. The carpet LOOKED clean, but Hubby showed me what was under the carpet when he pulled it out. Ugh.  Hubby remodeled the house before we moved into the home,...