Steroid inhaler alternatives

[AFOLNerd]

5 year old dd has asthma. Only flares up when she is run down/ill.
3 times she has ended up in ooh on a nebuliser due to it getting pretty bad.
She was prescribed a steroid inhaler (the brown one) after the second time, told to start taking it at the slightest hint of a cough/wheeze.
The problem is she has horrific nightmares when on it, waking up numerous times in the night screaming, hysterical and sobbing soaked in sweat.
Nice dr gave us a different one to try (orange) same issue.
So we stopped using it. The last couple of times she got bad I took her to gp before it got really bad and they prescribed prednisone which has cleared it dead within 24 hours.

She got bad again today and dp took her to gp. Who basically had a massive go at dp and said we need to give her the steroid inhalers and put up with the nightmares. He refuses to let us try any other steroid inhalers as “if one gives her nightmares they all will” no idea if this is true or not.
Anyone had any issues with steroid inhalers and found a solution?

You could ask about Montelukast. It's meant to work for about half of people who try it.

Sounds incredibly stressful for you. I don’t have any advice myself but have you tried Asthma UK or the British Lung Foundation? Both have helplines you can call for advice.

You could also try speaking to a pharmacist if there is a good one near you.

This sounds really distressing.

I wasn't aware of this being a recognised side effect but I had absolutely terrible and very frequent bad dreams when on becotide and pulmicort. I'd never made the connection but now that you have for me, I realise that when I switched to Symbicort (which has the same active steroid but must somehow be made up differently) these dreams subsided.

It’s interesting that she can take pred - which is a very strong steroid- but it’s the steroid inhalers which are causing her issues. There are LOTS of different ones. I would ask to see a specialist asthma nurse and see if you can try different ones.

Montelukast is pretty good but ironically the one issue people do seem to have on it is often nightmares (this is what happened to me so I can’t take it).

It might be worth joining the asthma uk closed group on Facebook (11k ish members) and asking there too.

I have quite severe asthma and I take seretide 250 and the blue inhaler as and when I need to. I also have Addison’s disease so take daily life long steroid tablets for that too. Steroids are both a blessing and a curse....!

Montelykast is an option. There's inhaled steroid via nebulizer but probably stronger dose than necessary for your child. Communicate with her physician perhaps a lower dose or less frequent dosing schedule. I couldn't tolerate inhaled steroids then did powerful and expensive immunotherapy every four weeks then back to inhaled steroids. Good luck she may outgrow it my son has allergies still but no longer an asthmatic

Thanks for all your help.
I had a long chat with a nurse at asthma uk this morning and she is not happy with how the drs are managing her asthma. We now have an appointment with the gp at lunch time and she has given me lots of ideas for things to try and get it under control.

Her older sister outgrew her asthma at about 8 so I’m hoping she will too.

How did the appointment go?

Not how I was expecting.
We ended up getting sent to the hospital by the gp because her sats were only 90%
So we only got home a couple of hours ago. She’s not doing great, she is on a high dose of blue inhaler every 4 hours including through the night for the next 48 hours. (Daddy is staying up to do the midnight one I have my alarm set for 4am!) and we have to go straight back in if she can’t last the 4 hours.
But we do have a referral to asthma clinic and I have had a chance to speak to several drs who think montelukast is the way to go.

So fingers crossed we can get this under control.
I’m now going to bed!

Oh no! Hope you get some sleep. Don’t hesitate to go back with her as they said.

Glad you got a referral and some advice as it is so important to get asthma under control as you know .