New to board-some questions regarding 5 year old son and asthma

Hello

I have three lovely boys who are 5, 3 and 16 months. My eldest son, Isaac, has asthma. Actually his history is a little complicated but the long and short of it is that he is now treated for asthma. I guess I am now only fjust full accepting this after years of blaming his respiratory problems on a bad virus which put him onto a ventiator when he was 14 months. But in some ways as he gets older teh asthma itself is coming out more and it is obvious that he does have it.

Isaac is currently on montelukast, inhaled steroids morning and before bed, salbutamol and atrovent.In the past he had a lot of oral steroids, oxygen, nebs, anti-biotics (forever having had chest infections) etc.

So as a Mum coming out of denial (despite having used asthma meds for the last 4 years) I have a few questions.

I always thought that asthma meant wheezing (I have no asthma in my family and no friends with it). Isaac only wheezes really at night when really bad. Otherwise he coghs, he coughs a lot. The night cough is terrible at the moment. Is this quite typical for children with asthma, or are they all different?

Isaac is tiny- he is on teh second centile for weight and 25th for height. His three year old brother is teh same size. I am told that this is unlikely to be due to his problems, is slow growth and asthma something that in your experience can go together?

At what stage do you think it is good to try and properly explain asthma to your child, and is there a good information source, age appropriate to help with this? (Isaac is a worrier so I have always tried to brush over it lightly without scaring him)

Now that ISAAC HAS just started school the fact that virus's hit him a lot harder means that he has already missed quite a bit of school, how do other parents deal with this?

Sorry for all the questions and please don't feel you have to answer them all, any info would be great

A worried Mum!

[angievere]

Hello and welcome to the forum. You will find it very useful and lots of nice people on here who understand what you are going through. First of all not all asthmatics wheeze, there has been a lot of posts on the forum about this. Asthma can vary from person to person, although there are standard triggers such as exercise and colds.

With regard to size, I would not worry about this too much. My teenage son (asthmatic) was always on the small size (lowest percentile) with a small appetite (had tummy problems as well but that's another story!) but he has shot up over the last year. The consultant told me genetics are the most important factor in growth when I raised the issue of slow growth - both me and my husband are the shortest in our families although we have tall siblings.

School attendance has been (and continues to be) a big problem for us. There was a post on the subject about a week ago (several contributions from me!) which you may find interesting. If you scroll down under Parents and Carers on left hand side of this page, you will find it. A lot depends on the attitude of your son's school - for us the Primary School was ok but we hit problems with Secondary School. Fortunately my son took a great interest in books from Day 1 and once he could read there was no stopping him. That has helped a lot in literacy.

I could say a lot more, but dont want to ramble on... Do feel free to PM me.

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Hi I am new here to my nearly 3 yr old has asthma and her high pitched squealing cough s worse at night or when the weather changes like now the damp air!!!Once she has had her puffa as we call it her cough then turns to a normal sounding irritating cough,if that makes sense! People do stare when she squeal coughs outside.My doctor has been hopeless gave me her inhalers and that was it,so after having advice from her play school leader I am going to a new doctor tomorrow.It is a worry isn't it? I only read today that the preventer medicine alupent was discontinued last year as it was proven that it caused more harm than good!!!!!That made my mind up today to change doctors!She too has had several chest infections and missed her 2 nd dose for flu jab because of it and guess what they no longer have the 2 nd dose to give!!!!I have tried to explain to Lola about asthma and her little friend has it too I suppose we told her in a way that hasn't frightened her and I'm sure there are story books out there maybe to read to Isaac.Oh by the way my daughter has non wheezy asthma she has the coughing type!!Good Luck and try not to worry x