Diagnosis: Asthma

This spring, Grady was diagnosed with asthma. This past winter, he had severe bronchitis, and later in the spring, he developed pneumonia after an ear infection. Basically, whenever Grady gets the slightest touch of a cold or infection, he starts to cough and wheeze. Quickly it turns into a very rattly cough, and you can hear every breath he takes. The scary part is that it is just so hard for him to breathe that his whole chest moves up and down like he's panting. We were two panicking parents!

So, after rushing him to the doctor over and over for antibiotic shots, steroid shots, nebulizer treatments, we finally have a controller medication that seems to be helping deter some of the chronic wheezing. Every night, we sit with Grady while he watches Yo Gabba Gabba and do a nebulizer treatment of Pulmicort. It is a steroid that is (hopefully) strenghthening his airways so that they don't get inflamed as easily. If he is having trouble wheezing or coughing, we do Albuterol through the nebulizer about every 4 hours.

Today, Grady is getting over a cold and we've been having to nebulize him more often the past few days. He is to the point that he sits so still, and will even put the face mask on with the elastic so that he can dance to Yo Gabba while he nebulizes. HUGE improvement over the screaming, flailing arms, mommy restraining treatments we used to have to endure. That seriously broke my heart.

The pediatrician says this may be a condition that Grady eventually grows out of. I hope so, but for now, I am being very proactive about staying on top of his treatments so that we limit his wheezing days as much as possible.