Asthma

I try not to post to many grrrrr types of posts but I cant help myself today. I had no clue as to what asthma entailed when I was told that Caleb had it almost 2 years ago. It seems there are so many varying degrees that doctors don't give you the full picture up front but wait to see how many attacks and how bad your child's is and then gradually get more aggressive in treating it. It took 2 ambulance rides, ~ 8 ER visits and 1 hospital stay for us to have the tools and knowledge to be able to control it at home. Even now its crazy that in the morning I can see that Caleb is starting to get a cold and by that night we are fighting to keep him out of the hospital! A cough does not mean a cough in this house. A cough means hes almost to hospital time. This time around he started having problems about 4 days ago and its been non stop breathing treatments and steroids and I feel so bad for his little body. You can see him shake because the meds all act as stimulants. He is on a daily steroid that is temporarily stunting his growth, they say that in the end it wont effect him he will just grown later. We also have him on the nebulizer every 4 hours, even during the night. Hes such a trooper about it though. This morning when he got up he was coughing so hard that he couldn't hardly breathe. I hooked him up to his nebulizer in my bed and he laid there like a champ breathing it in and when it was done I turned it off and he stretched his arms up high and said, "Thanks mom, that was awesome." The rolled over and fell asleep!

We didn't have the Internet when Caleb was in the hospital and so here is the video from then just to give you an idea of how hard it is for him to breathe and how much the meds effect his poor little body. I pray that he will grow out of this!