He's a RAD Dude

Here we go, yet again. Another waive of illness has stricken our family. Right now it's Ben's turn to be down with it, after the other three of us have already had our turn. He started with a fever and a cough on Sunday morning, and he hasn't really gotten any better. And of course, in true Benny style, he started to get the respiratory issues. He hasn't been too bad, and we've been on top of it with regular breathing treatments and running the humidifier, but that just hasn't cut it. He had to stay home from school today (they took his temperature at 3:55 on Tuesday and he had a fever, which knocks him out for the whole next day), so he spent the day with my mom. Apparently Grandma looked like a comfy mattress, because he slept on her almost all day. That is really not like him, and the last time he got so sleepy and lethargic it was because he wasn't getting enough oxygen. So I decided that a trip to urgent care probably wasn't such a bad idea. So after dinner, off we went. Thankfully, there is a pediatric urgent care about 1/4 mile from our house. We were there for 2 hours, got 2 breathing treatments and a steroid injection, and got 4 prescriptions as lovely parting gifts. The doctor was awesome and really spent time with us explaining what was going on. He was able to tell us that Ben has bronchitis and Reactive Airway Disease (RAD). Basically, he's got very sensitive lungs and when he gets a cold, the tubes that lead to his lungs tend to get inflamed and restrict his airway. He warned us to not let anyone tell us that he has asthma, which is completely different from RAD. He suggested that once we get past this flare up, we should meet with our pediatrician and discuss and more aggressive preventative treatment. Poor guy. The good news is that he should grow out of it. When that may happen is anyone's guess. Hopefully we can get it under control soon so we can put a stop to these frequent flare ups!