Hi all,
I need some advice please on what I should do with my DD. Who has ‘difficulty’ breathing ‘episodes’.
my DD is 5. She had been in nursery since she was about 17 months old. Since starting nursery she had cough after cough, illness after illness. She has had really bad chest infections and also had bronchitis when she was about 3, which she had an X-ray for but did not have to be admitted to hospital. I was very worried at the time.
our GP then suggested she have an inhaler - a blue one, and if her coughs got really bad to try a few pumps to see if this helped. We use the blue inhaler for about 10 months but honestly I didn’t feel it made a difference. When she would have coughs sometimes it would be with a temperature, sometimes it wouldn’t. Coughing was worse at night and she would vomit from coughing so much.
since starting school, her coughs have got so much better. The first year she only had about 6-8 coughs/infections. Compared to previously a cough every few weeks. Then towards the end of term, she started doing this thing where she takes a deep breath, and look like she’s catching her breathe, but not necessarily after exercise. This could happen when she was just sitting down watching tv. I filmed her doing this and showed the dr, who prescribed a brown inhaler to be taken once in the morning and once at night ongoing. At this time my DD was 4 and the Dr said that she was too young for an asthma test to confirm. I read up about asthma (as no one in my family has it) and I decided to cut out nuts, she would often eat these whole as a snack. Since cutting them out, the breathing ‘episodes’ stopped. So we cut out using the brown inhaler and I had hoped she had grown out of it.
However this past week, the last three days she has complained to her teacher that she is finding it difficult to breathe but doesn’t look like she is struggling, no signs of wheezing or going red etc. but the teacher has of course given her the blue inhaler. I’ve contacted the doctor for an appointment but could only get one on the 20th March.
tonight the same thing has happened. Whilst she was going up for her bath, she wasn’t running or anything like that. She said her chest hurts and feels like ‘someone is stabbing her heart’ and that it feels tight. I gave her the inhaler and I believe it helped but only after administering it twice.
she hasn’t had any nuts and there’s nothing I can think that might have caused this to flare up.
she is otherwise well but has a dairy intolerance. Her chest bone does ‘indent’ a bit, I would say a little more than ‘normal’ but many doctors have seen this and never said it look abnormal.
what I’m asking here, is if I should get her to a doctor/a&e or a walk in centre over the weekend? I’m worried it’s getting worse and could lead to a full on asthma attack.
Does anyone have children with asthma? Does this sound like that? Any advice would be great appreciated.
thanks