Asthmatic Unknown

As a parent, there's nothing scarier than watching your child struggle to breathe.  To watch his little chest flutter up and down, to see the skin at the sides of his ribs sucked inward like he's attached to a vacuum cleaner.  To hear the sound of rustling paper that accompanies every single shallow breath, to see the lack of energy he has because he simply can't get enough oxygen to power the little legs that want to walk from one side of the room to the other to get into trouble.  It's even scarier when it happens twice.

Last month, 2.0 had RSV and required nebulizer treatments to loosen up his lungs so he could cough and eventually breathe again.  He was better in a week and I thought we'd dodged a bullet.

Then last week he started to wheeze again.  But this time it was accompanied with no desire to eat and drink and a lethargy that my son has never had.  He simply wanted to sleep all the time, but he couldn't breathe so instead he laid on the floor, crying, or in my lap, crying.  He simply couldn't be comforted.  He wouldn't walk or talk or play.  It was horrible.

I freaked out, called the doctor, and he was put back on his nebulizer treatments, along with two doses of steroids a day for five days.  Once again, he hates the nebulizer treatments, but he's now walking around again, trying to talk, falling off the couch and cutting his lip, knocking over a bar stool.  All of it with a wheezy cough and the skin at his sides that sucks in like he's in that vacuum cleaner.

We don't know what's wrong.

It's not RSV again, at least that's what the doctor told us today.  The most likely culprit is asthma.  Maybe asthma associated with seasonal allergies that would require him to need nebulizer treatments during the spring and fall.  Maybe full blown asthma that he'll have forever or asthma that he'll outgrow.

All I can think about is those first six weeks when I didn't know I was pregnant and kept smoking anyway.  The first few months when my husband kept smoking but tried to keep it away from me.  Those cool spring days when I didn't think he needed a coat and he probably did.  

It's horribly scary to watch 2.0 suffer with this whole thing.  I hate listening to him scream while I hold a mask to his face for the breathing treatments.  I cringe inside when I hear a little wheeze in his lungs or watch him take a moment too long to play or pull himself back up to stand because he can't catch his breath.  

We still don't have any answers, but at least what we're doing is making him feel better.