checkup

The Entertainer had a six month asthma checkup on Monday.

She started wheezing when she was months old. She has had a pulmonologist (lung dr) since she was 13 months old. When we first starting going to "the clinic," it was behind the ER in the closest Children's hospital. Several years ago, the hospital expanded to have a separate "clinic" building.

I lost count of the times we drove to the ER when she was too small to tell me what was wrong. I've watched her blood oxygen levels rise with breathing treatments, held her, rocked her, and read books to her during breathing treatments. I have an inverter for the vehicle so power to run a nebulizer is always available.

There was a point when the medicine her pulmonologist thought would be most helpful was not available in the form we needed so we used a different form and measured the medicine into another mix to create what she needed. She has always taken multiple medicines daily just to breathe normally.

For the second visit in a row, we have reduced medicines!!! Six months ago, we dropped one out of the daily regimen that was mostly supportive in nature and have not noticed any differences. This week we changed to a different daily maintenance medication. We're in a trial period to see how it works but that we are in a place to even think about changing one of the "big dogs" is almost amazing. I have worked hard to get her asthma well controlled so that she could choose to do what she wanted to. We haven't had that all the time. But we've had very well controlled asthma for about a year now. I never thought we'd see the day when she had a real possibility of "growing out" of her asthma. While she may not, the fact that she is not continually buffeted by the changing weather, high humidity, a simple cold, nominal exertion, or laughing too hard is a major step toward asthma being a consistent 4th or 5th thought instead of the first or second thought.

That's a good day at the doctor.

Thanks be to God and modern medical technology.