Help please, 9 yr old and school

Hi

My son was diagnosed with Asthma lasy year, and given the blue inhaler to take 'when needed and before exersise'. I initially took him as I thought he had asthma due to his wheezing and breathlessness when exerting himself, and he seemed to have a constant cough but no cold. I took one inhaler to school and told them what the doctor had said, and I have one at home.

Recently, he said he has been getting worse, and the school office mentioned that he had been coming in quite a bit for his inhaler, sometimes twice over lunch period. Then today my hubby had a call from the school office manager saying that Jack is 'overusing' his inhaler, and she is worried he is taking it when he doesn't need to, asking us to have a word with him about proper use of the inhaler.

As I am new to this, and my doctor must be going on 100, (his idea of dieting is to only have one meal a day!) any advice would be appreciated. I don't think his asthma is severe, he hasn't been to hospital with it or needed a brown inhaler, and the doctor said it was mild asthma, so I don't really have a clue!

He is one of these kids that I think would love to break his arm just to go and have an x-ray/pot etc and a small part of me thinks he plays up on things sometimes, and he has started asking how bad can asthma get, with me telling him it can kill you, as I don't believe in keeping the truth from my kids. I just don't know where to go with this...

Sorry for the long post! Thanks for any help/advice you can give.

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Hi Vonnie and welcome!

I'm not a parent or anything so can't really give you advice there! Or even a doctor/nurse...

But it strikes me that the school office manager isn't really qualified to say whether your son 'needs' it or not! At least she's not refusing to give it to him when he asks; hopefully she knows that no matter what she thinks about him using it too much, if he asks for it he should have it. tbh I find this policy a bit weird anyway. I know some schools have a blanket policy on medication which makes sense for some things, but I'd always understood that as you can't really overdose on Ventolin, it's safer for a child to have it on them, especially with things like PE where they might need it more.

If your doctor's not much help, is there another one in the surgery you could see who might be more helpful? If Jack's using the blue inhaler more it might be a sign that he should be started on a brown one. Or is there an asthma nurse at the surgery?

It also might be worth ringing the adviceline on here (number top left), since you're new to this - they're very helpful and should be able to give you proper expert advice which obviously I can't! But hope this is vaguely helpful...

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Thank you. I am going to pop into the surgery and see if we have an asthma nurse he can see, failing that, see if I can see a different doctor. Just been reading some info on the site, and it seems he should be checked regularly anyway! I think it has been a year now, and he hasn't had any follow-up since he was first diagnosed and given the blue inhaler, which I had to replace the schools one last week with no questions asked at the surgery. Thank you for your help!