The "first day of summer" dreams about sleeping in, taking it easy, and enjoying the sunshine certainly didn't pan out today. Christopher's asthma started flaring up last night - -he was up for a nebulizer treatment at 4:30. Treatments should last at least 4 hours, but 2 hours later, he was up again breathing very tightly -- enough to concern me. At that point we had to ponder the question of whether to run him to the ER as fast as we could or try to get him breathing "well enough" until the doctor's office opens at 8:00. We opted for the latter and had him in for a 10:45 appointment after another 6:30 am nebulizer treatment.

By the time he got to the doctor's his breathing was very shallow and he was having "retractions" where you can see his chest sucking in to get air. That is a very visible sign of a serious asthma attack. Even walking from the parking lot to the office had him wheezing enough to have me frightened. Our regular doctor wasn't in, but the one we did see scared me a bit. He urged me to not wait to bring him into the ER in the future (guess we made the wrong choice to keep him at home until we could get him into the doctor). That idea works for most problems, but not asthma. And he urged me to help make sure we're watching his peak flows more often so that we can catch attacks more quickly before they become seriously. We left with Christopher breathing more easily and with a giant sack of meds. And with me feeling a bit bad as a mother in terms of my asthma control job. For some reason, I just haven't become as well-versed on asthma as I have on allergies. I need to think of it as a chronic problem that we're constantly monitoring and controlling, just like the allergies, instead of an acute issue to be handled when his breathing gets bad.