Monday, October 20, 2008

Aching Lungs

Today we learned that Lily has asthma. As a mother I feel horrible. How long has she had this? Why didn't I know sooner? Isn't that what we moms do? We fix things. We make our little ones feel better. :(

The doc gave her an inhaler with instructions to take it every night so that she can sleep. She only has these coughing fits at night. Hopefully this inhaler will treat her and she will be comfortable. We have been dealing with sleepless nights for months now. This past week has been extremely bad. Last night we woke (Lil and I) about every 15-30 minutes. How tiring for both of us.

I know that she needs at least 12 full hours of sleep each night and she has only been getting maybe 8 and those are very fitful. We should know by this weekend if this medication helps. If not we will have to do breathing treatments, etc. She already dislikes me making her inhale the meds. I am wondering how long it will take her to understand the correlation between sucking it down and feeling better. She is one smart kid, so probably not very long. Especially since she is our best medicine taker in the family. She will take a tsp of Tylenol or Robitussin without so much as a whimper while the older sister will cry and pout and refuse to even come close to the medicine dropper. What opposites they are.

1 comment:

bren j. said...

What a bummer! Not sure if you would consider preventive meds down the line, but I take Singulair everyday with really good results. I know they make a children's formula too because I've taken those when the Dr. didn't have any regular samples. They have quite a lovely cherry flavour. :)
Either way, I hope the inhaler helps.