How are all the asthmatic children doing at the moment?

[foxinsocks]

Dd appears ok having finally got over the chesty cough that feels like it was with us for months! We've gone back down to her normal steroid dose and fingers crossed (because she's back at school this week and bound to pick up something horrible!), we'll be able to stay at a lower dose for a while.

I feel a bit uneasy tbh - maybe it's something to do with the weather but normally by now, because of the cold air, she'd be coughing quite a bit. I'm just hoping it's not the calm before the storm iyswim.

How are all the other asthmatic ones at the moment?

glad to hear that misdee!

dd's cough is picking up again so we'll have to watch her for a bit to see whether we need to up her dose

this time look here some babies have been diagnosed as young as 3 months. maybe print it off and take it to doctor?

some doctors around here won't diagnose until 2-5 though ...

DS had a bad attach before Christmas and was in hospital. After a nebuliser he was given 10 puffs of ventolin every 2 hours and then every 4 hours. Every two days the dosage was dropped by 2 puffs. He was on oral steroids and inhaled steroids. He got another virus a couple of weeks later and pretty much straight away I increased his puffs to 10 every 4 hrs (even thought there were no symptoms other than a persistent cough) and lo and behold it didn't develop into asthma.

Typically he will start with a persistent cough and then he will have difficulty breathing and it will start quite suddenly. I increased the puffs before the breathing problems.

We were given a leaflet on how to reduce dustmites (he is allergic according to blood test) but his trigger is always a virus. It is so unrealistic - freezing toys etc. I also wonder what would happen if I kept up this regime and then when he left home he got really ill cos he was so unused to dustmites.

I have started an experiment:

He is using that hand gel - First Defence- which is meant to kill all cold and flu viruses for up to 3 hourws and apparently 50% of colds are transmitted by the virus being spread by hand to hand contact. Also the virus can survive for 72 hrs on surfaces. I am hoping it will reduce his viral infections.