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This is a look that we have gotten used to in our house. You doing your “Breathing”. In October 2006 Daddy took you to the ER in the middle of the night. You had been sick with a cold for a while and had been coming to our bed in the middle of the night for at least two weeks. You would wake up crying and only calm down in our bed. This night was a particularly bad one and I was awake enough to hear your labored breathing. When you went to the ER they gave you your first breathing treatment. You were up for the rest of the night. You went to bed at about 6:30a.m. and Daddy had taken you at 2:00a.m. The next morning I took you to your regular pediatrician. She diagnosed you with allergy induced asthma. We were told to make an appointment with an allergist when you turned 3 and we were sent home with a nebulizer. You had to do breathing treatments for two weeks, none of them further than 4 hours apart. You (and the rest of the family) were so sick of them by the time you were done. You eventually got better but it would not last long. Any time you got a little sick you would have a hard time breathing, and a hard time sleeping. You did pretty well for a while, you had even stopped drooling, which is something I had thought you just had grown out of until the spring when you could not breath through your nose again. The next time we had to take you to the doctor because of your breathing (you had a fever too so they were worried you might have pneumonia) they put you on a preventative medication called Singulair. Not long after that was your appointment with your allergist. It was 3 days before your 3rd birthday. You had to have about thirty different allergy tests which were long needles that had just a tiny bit of the allergen and they had to basically scrape you with it to see if you were allergic. Of course you were allergic to everything you can be except foods (thank goodness for that). You were most allergic to cats which was not a surprise since you played with a kitten at our house one day and were miserable for 2 days. You have now been going to the allergist every week for a shot that will hopefully make you less allergic to everything. You are so good about it, too. We tell you that we have to go get “one poke” and you do not even complain as long as you know it will only be one and not the entire thirty again. We are still doing breathing treatments every once in a while, but we hope to get you on a better preventative medication so you will not have to do your “breathing” quite as often.
You are such a sweet boy about being sick all of the time. I sometimes think about how you must feel and that I do not give you enough credit for holding yourself together. I hope one day you will be healed and feel well while playing outside and with animals that you love so dearly. I love you.
We went back for a follow-up appointment about 6 months after the first visit. I think it was at that appointment that his allergist realized he had a bad sinus infection. The x-ray showed that there was no air in his sinuses at all. It took 4 rounds of very strong antibiotics to get rid of it. For about a week after the infection was finally gone Dusty kept saying to me, "Mommy, smell this!" He was so excited to be able to smell, it still brings tears to my eyes to think about how long it must have been that he could not smell anything.
He is doing a little bit better so far this year. We will see how it goes...
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