Asthma

He has asthma.

A lot of it. 

Has he had asthma all along?

Or did he develop it from smoking stuff for two years?

The specialist said that he could not say for sure.

I can’t help feeling like it did.

Now there is one more thing to worry about.

Will he ever have a scary asthma attack?

I think he had one before we took him to the specialist.  It was about 2:00 a.m. and I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea for him in another attempt to stop the coughing.  He came downstairs complaining of a pain his right side behind his ribs.  All of a sudden, he started coughing in a different way and acting like he couldn’t breathe very well.  It was frightening and I wanted to take him to the hospital, but he kept refusing and saying that he knew he was going to be all right.  It went on for about five minutes.  Then, he thought that using one of the inhalers that we had been prescribed when he first got sick might help.  After about 15 more minutes, he stopped the weird coughing and was breathing better.  So, the inhaler might have worked.  But, he still had the pain in his ribs.  I thought he might have finally cracked a rib from the stress of weeks and weeks of coughing.  The chest X-ray did not show any breaks and the doctor said that my son must have pulled a muscle.

I know that if that was an asthma attack, I don’t ever want to see another one.

The doctor thought that we could get the asthma under control and didn’t seem concerned about asthma attacks.  At first my son had to use two different inhalers twice a day and take prednisone tablets.  One inhaler opened the airways and one reduced inflammation.  Then, we scaled back to the inhaler that controls inflammation.  He will be using that one for a year and then he will be re-evaluated.    

So now we know.

Asthma.

Another reason to worry about him not smoking marijuana or anything else.  It will make the asthma worse (which the doctor did tell him and I hope he believes it).

The treatment helped within a few days. 

It was so nice.

No more coughing every few seconds.

Silence at night.

Sweet, relaxing, restful, silence.

Yes!