coughers/wheezers (but not - yet?- diagnosed asthmatics) support thread

[Monkeybird]

Dear all

This kind of started here when we realised quite a few of us have persistent coughers and wheezers but they either are not asthmatic, are too young to have been diagnosed as asthmatic or are post-infection (eg bronchiolitis) and are just prone to coughs, especially in the winter.

One of the problems I have found is that while there are asthma nurses and clinics to help those diagnosed, if they're not asthmatic, you have lots of worries but very little support. Not to deny it to those who have asthma but the number of times I've been stuck with a coughing wheezing baby and had nowhere to go...

It would be helpful for people to post here:

experiences
what helps
what doesn't help
what your doctors said
what the research says
what help you can get out there
what treatments, equipment, home solutions you use

and whatever else you wish to add...

I will post my stuff shortly but handing the thread over to you all and please bump from time to time...

Hi everyone...

Broadband has been down and still is so posting quickly and wirelessly, but when we move in couple of weeks, hope to catch up with all the coughers/wheezers' mummies!

Anyhow looks like some interesting alternative diagnoses here: PBB and excavatum summatorother...

Will look these up when I get time but if anyone has any more info on these conditions, I and I'm sure others on this thread would be very interested to hear about it...

Hi sorry I am a gatecrasher from another thread monkeybird said it would be ok to ask for advice on bronchialitis, my ds was diagnosed today and I am petrified. Been told if his breathing gets worse to call an ambulance

bumping again

cough cough cough cough cough bloody cough...

...again.

Ho hum. DS2 has been fine for months and is now back with some sort of virus or whatever and coughing his little heart out. I've tried the ventolin before he went to bed but it has made no difference; in fact he seems to be coughing more but maybe that's just because he's lying down. I have no idea whether to try steaming the room TBH as am knackered (he's been poorly all day and baby v demanding at same time...)

What should I do now? Looking forward to another night of no sleep. Goes like this: DS2 coughs and coughs... Finally he settles. 10 mins later I fall asleep. Baby wakes for a feed. 10 mins later I fall asleep. cough cough cough cough...

my dd had croup endlessly with one terrible episode when we were abroad with her being nebulised every 4 hours at the clinic. dreadful! then she was always ill (still is) and we kept getting told it was just croup. she has eczema really badly. after about 5 years her gdad (a gp) said oh well i wonder when they will diagnose asthma and i said. what arethe symptoms and he gave them to me and i said she has that. so went to gp kicked up a stink and tehy dais yes she has it and finally gave me all the kit. her(half) brother has it but so does his mum so we didnt think they wouldnt mention it to us. now she still has a bad time occasionally (like last friday when i thought she might actaully die) but it is under control. the worst thing is the vomiting when she coughs and the awful tight chest (she doesnt seem to wheeze, is that normal?, just goes straight to struggling for breath)

Hi all,
I'd like some opinions please. My DS2 is 19months his big brother and sister have never been wheezy etc (oh except for DS1 (8) having bacterial trachyitis last oct and ending up on itu for 5 days. No family history of asthma. But DS2 has sounded wheezy noisey breathing like he needs a good cough since his first bought of croup at 5 months old.

Was hospitalised for croup 3 times last winter but we have luckily escaped it so far this year. The nurse practitioner says its because he's 'a chunky baby' so he's bound to wheeze!!! DS2 weighs 24 lbs and has done for at least 5 months!

He is on his third course of antibiotics since Christmas despite daily use of sabutamol spacer(which does relieve a little)

Should he be on a different inhalor? Is that nurse talking any sense? Should I investigate other causes?

Hi all,
I'd like some opinions please. My DS2 is 19months his big brother and sister have never been wheezy etc (oh except for DS1 (8) having bacterial trachyitis last oct and ending up on itu for 5 days. No family history of asthma. But DS2 has sounded wheezy noisey breathing like he needs a good cough since his first bought of croup at 5 months old.

Was hospitalised for croup 3 times last winter but we have luckily escaped it so far this year. The nurse practitioner says its because he's 'a chunky baby' so he's bound to wheeze!!! DS2 weighs 24 lbs and has done for at least 5 months!

He is on his third course of antibiotics since Christmas despite daily use of sabutamol spacer(which does relieve a little)

Should he be on a different inhalor? Is that nurse talking any sense? Should I investigate other causes?

babalon, I don't know about other causes but our very unscientific survey (about 5 people higher up on this thread!) suggested that the big baby=bad chest story might hold some weight, at least anecdotally. You might find some help on other diagnoses by reading the other posts, but FWIW my oldest boy grew out of it and I'm hoping the middle one will too...

Not much help right now but...

DS2 was my biggest but 8lb 5oz not that big? He is solid but by no means fat sor4t of Rugby player build.

His chest sounds horrid you can here it from downstairs when he's upstairs! Thats on a good day!

Babalon- after an infection such as croup they can just have what is called 'post viral wheezing' that is just that - no underlying asthma, but the airways are just inflamed so causing wheeze. If it is, then they do grow out of it, and are at no higher risk of asthma later.

However, he is not ' bound to wheeze', and after that sort of period of time he should really be referred to a consultant to have a check for anything else going on.

When Ds is doing well I find it rather annoying to not be able to know exactly where he is just by listening for him breathing !

Hi, have just found this thread. DS1 nearly 11yrs was a big baby - 9.5 and although not now huge, is quite solid.

Aged around 3 he started with horrible barking dry coughs especially when he had a cold. We would be up for nights on end with him trying to prop him up. Back and forth to the Dr's who prescribed linctus type cough medicines and a blue inhaler - salbutimol I think. When he was about 7 they decided that enough was enough and gave him a brown inhaler to be used twice a day with two puffs per go.

This actually worked, and the wheezing and coughing was reduced drastically.

It got to the point where in the last 8/10 months he has not had to use the blue inhaler at all and on the last asthma review a few weeks ago, the nurse said hmmm he seems to have grown out of it. You can now cut down his brown inhaler to once a day and after a couple of weeks stop it all together.

Lo and behold, this week he is coughing and wheezing really badly. So we are back to using the brown inhaler which I think takes about two weeks to get in your system.

He is actually off school today.

By the way, of the many times he has been sick because of this, it has been mucusy.

Hi! I think I might be joining you. My DD is 19 months andamongst other thingshas hypotonia, which means she is a bit floppier than babies usually are. She's not wheezy all the time but since November has been more or less permanently snotty, sometimes with a fever, sometimes not, and she coughs a lot at night and in the early morning. Since January she's added the dreaded mucus vomiting too. She's not been diagnosed with it yet but GP rather thinks she might develop asthma especially as I have it (although I wasn't affected as a baby).

Thanks to you all! I was just doing a trawl through the back-catalogue of wheezy threads and am feeling more in control of our situation with every post I'm reading. DS started with a first wheezy episode 3 months ago at 16 months (a week after I finished bf, which I see has been debated earlier in this thread, and for which I beat myself up till I saw it was pointless!). He ended up in A&E, had a nebuliser twice, then home with salbutamol & prednisolone. No one would commit themselves on diagnosis, so I think officially it was 'viral wheeze'. We'/ve now had 4 more episodes, each after a cold, and are currenlty doing well to get through 2 weeks without one. Only the most recent resulted in getting more steroids from GP.

Anyway I was thinking about how often this was happening and whether he was getting a cold so often that I should be really worried but I think from reading this thread, that your LOs get it quite often. Also wondering about prednisolone and side effects / how often a one-yr-old can safely have it? the other thing is the regime / routine whatever you call it, that hospital originally suggested for giving reliever inhaler includes waking DS every 4 hours at night for first 2 or 3 days, I think that is what has plunged me into gloom this time, just so tired that I don't have a sense of perspective today and I've gone from thinking that the situation is quite manageable and will definitely improve anyway over next few years, to worrying already about the next cold and how it will affect DS. And we were just trying to help DS sleep better anyway so this has undone all of that in one stroke. Anyone else feeling frazzled by similar events this week?