A Nebulizer Commits Suicide

My son is three, and he has Reactive Airway Disease, which is a nice way of saying “We’re Not Sure But We Think It’s Asthma”. They don’t officially call it asthma until they’re about four, as babies are too hard to diagnose and they hope that the child outgrows it by that age, anyway.

I was completely shocked the first time the doctor told me my son was wheezing. I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t see anything. He was two months old, and I almost killed him by not noticing – at least that’s how I felt. Truth was, the doctor didn’t realize it either – it was as we were walking out the door that he listened for the third time – and that’s when he heard the wheeze.

The doctor told us that he likely inherited it from one of us. Well, neither of us have asthma, but I did have some bad “allergies” when I was a kid. According to the doctor asthma was way under-diagnosed at that time, and I likely have mild asthma (Aha! Now I know why I always have horrible coughs when I get sick…).

That was the beginning of daily nebulizer treatments – four times a day when he’s sick, once a day when he’s not. It wasn’t always a pleasant experience; at first he cried bloody murder. Eventually he would sit quietly in our lap and we’d read a book or watch a movie, and as he got older was able to do the treatments by himself. He’s grown so fast!

As time goes by and he nears that magic age of four, I’ve resigned myself to the probability that he won’t outgrow this. He continues to get sick, though less often, but we’ve not been able to stop the daily maintenance treatments. A hard pill to swallow, but since there’s nothing I can do to change it, I accept it.

Just before Christmas his doctor recommended a change in medication to Advair, which is administered via an inhaler. Because he’s too young to work an inhaler on his own, we got him this nifty Aerochamber, which is so very cool my sister wants one (she’s afraid to use an inhaler).

So, now we only have to use the nebulizer when he’s sick. What freedom! It’s been part of our routine for so long. It’s made us change plans, cut visits short and filled our house with an incessant buzzing. Now we have quiet. Ahhhhhh.

The nebulizer was apparently unhappy over it’s drastically cut schedule. Distraught that it was about to be banished to the closet, it jumped off the table and started making really odd, loud noises. Instead of the closet it was buried in the bottom of the garbage pail.

Thanks for the memories, Neb. We’re getting a new model, which will hopefully stay in the box.