For the most part when Jordan was younger, I would give him his meds. As he got older, he became responsible to take his own medicine. I do ask him if he took his meds just to double check he in fact did them.
I don’t think the medicine treats the cause of his asthma
I think we have to find the cause of what makes Aiden’s tubes tighten up and treat that. I think these steroids are not a treatment for the cause of his asthma; they are just bringing him out this critical situation. I think the roots of his asthma really have to be fixed. I’m sure even if I give him Flovent at home, we will have some situation where we’ll be back in the Emergency Room in six months or one or two years. My husband read a lot about steroids and all these treatments, and even I once heard on a radio station that the steroids really help if you’re wheezing a lot, and they can prevent asthma even if you don’t have that much. Now I am really fighting with myself, whether to give Aiden his medication every day or see if he can live without this medication, because I don’t want him to become dependent on any medication– that’s not the correct thing to do, either.
I knew it could be worse, but I don’t like to have him take medicine
I also hate to watch Jordan have to take medicine every day. I know it could be worse and there are many more kids out there that are more sick and taking more medication, but I still don’t like to see him have to do this.
He doesn’t seem to have any objection to taking maintenance medications every day. He holds the spacer on his own face. He would like to try to do it himself, although I won’t let him. He doesn’t have any negative feelings about taking the medication at this point. In the beginning, he really fought it. We did a little behavior modification with it, so that he got a little chocolate chip every time he took his medication. He very quickly got used to the medication and now occasionally, maybe once every three weeks, he will say, “I just took my medicine can I have a chocolate chip?” But he’s really forgotten about that as a reinforcer so it really did work.
I worry about too much or too little medicine
A couple of weeks ago Toby had a cold, and in the back of my mind I wondered, “Am I giving him enough medication? Am I giving him too much medication?” I personally feel like if you are unsure of how much medication to give, it is better err on the side of giving him too much because the aerosolized medications don’t have a significant amount of side effects. But I do worry in the back of my head a little bit about whether I’m giving him enough or too much. When he’s not sick it doesn’t really tend to be as much of an issue. He has gone for a couple of months with just needing to be on maintenance medications, which for him is two puffs of Flovent a day, but when he’s sick I think about it a lot more.
Treat the asthma, not the cold
When Tyson gets a cold, he has to increase his asthma medicines more because he can have asthma attacks when he gets a virus or the flu. If he gets sick with a cold they tell me I can increase the amount of Albuterol I give him and give it to him like I would give him Robitussin, every four to six hours. He needs the Albuterol because it is asthma which is underlying that cold. So you have to treat the asthma more than you need to treat the virus. It’s a complicated situation– I used to think that having him take that much Albuterol was a lot, but because he does have asthma, he needs those doses to keep him progressively doing okay. Otherwise, he goes downhill and he ends up in the hospital.