Breathing Easy

This last year has just been incredible, compared to the one before. Between January and April of 2009, Ben began having respiratory flareups where he couldn't take a deep breath, or really any kind of breath, without breaking into a horrible coughing fit. He was getting breathing treatments every 4 hours, had three shots of Predisone, a powerful steriod, in that short 4 month period, and nearly ended up in the hospital on at least one occassion. It was miserable for all involved. But then we got together with Kelvin Panasar, M.D., a wonderful pediatric pulmonologist. He prescribed Ben a preventative steriod that we hoped would keep his airways open so that, even if he came down with a cold or allergies (which is usually what did it for him) his airways would stay open. He also put him on Singulair to try to control the allergies to prevent flareups in the first place. I am so happy to say that in the last 12 months, Ben has only needed 3 doses of Albuterol to treat respiratory flareups, and the flareups he did have were super mild compared to those last year. I can't even remember the last time he's even had a cold! (And I'm really hoping I am not jinxing myself in saying that!)

Yesterday we went to see Dr. Panasar for his post-cold-and-flu-season checkup. What I love about Dr. Panasar is that he doesn't expect me to just shut up and listen and do what he says. He values "Dr. Mom" and wants to know what I think since I'm the one that sees it all. Since Benny's been doing so good, we together decided to take Ben all the way off of his medications and see how he does on his own. If the flareups return, we'll try putting him back on one of them, and will also allergy test him to see what he might be reacting to (not that you can really do to much about environmental allergies other than medicate).

I'm so happy that he is now set free from nightly breathing treatments, although he never seemed to mind them. He's always been so good about them, thankfully! Hopefully his little airways have grown enough to be able to handle any mild inflamation should any happen to come on. I'm just praying we can continue down this healthy road we've been traveling the last year. I like it here!