I changed my diet
Jason has several food allergies, which are his biggest asthma triggers. So I’ve had to change my diet to accommodate his. I am someone who likes peanut butter snacks, but Jason’s asthma could flare up if I did that because he’s allergic to peanut butter. He’s allergic to nuts, and they usually cause him to have an asthma attack. So, I’ve had to change my entire diet.
The only time his asthma really affects Jason is when it acts up. Otherwise, he can do basically almost everything everybody else can do. But if he’s got a cold, or if he’s eaten something he’s not supposed to have eaten, because for him his asthma’s mainly because of his allergies, his asthma acts up. Then he has to do the nebulizer treatments. They get him more hyper than he normally is, and then he tries to run around more, and he can’t breathe, so it makes it harder.

Specific allergies
Katie has severe food allergies – she’s a child of anaphylaxis to food and protein, and she’s asthmatic. That can be a deadly combination. Respiratory distress can certainly be a part of anaphylaxis, and then you throw asthma on top of that, and it can spiral downward very quickly. And if you put an asthmatic child on a respirator, it can be very difficult to get them off of it. It’s not a good combination – it’s two strikes against them. So if she gets a cold, that will kick her asthma in, and then she ends up on a steroid to control it. But if she had a food allergic reaction on top of that, and it caused an asthma exacerbation, it wouldn’t be good. So that’s always on our radar screens.