Allergist, Take 1 & 2

On Friday, Jan 11^th, Parker started wheezing again. Keep in mind, we’d just seen Dr. Ray that Monday when Parker was well. It seems like he’s only off steroids a week before he starts wheezing again.  We started doing albuterol treatments every 4 hours that night and decided to hold out for his allergy/asthma appointment. I debated several different days about calling his pediatrician since he was getting worse, but then we learned that his appointment with Dr. Brauer would be that Friday afternoon (Jan 18^th).

We knew Parker would need steroids again, but we were glad that Dr. Brauer was able to listen to his wheezing.  She was not happy with the way he sounded, so she had us give him another albuterol treatment in her office with a new mask. Parker was ticked! He hated the mask, and I felt sorry for everyone else who had to listen to him scream.

 

On the bright side of things, that fish mask is pretty darn awesome! It only takes 7-8 minutes to administer a breathing treatment (as opposed to our current one which took 15-17 minutes). Dr. Brauer recommended doubling Parker’s pulmicort to .5 (and keeping it twice a day). She added Singulair at night. She also started Parker on steroids and benedryl, and she wanted us to keep up the albuterol every 4 hours with the new mask.  We left there happy to have a new, more aggressive game plan… but we were kind of overwhelmed with Parker on 5 medicines. Luckily, we were able to drop the benedryl and albuterol after 3 days and the steroids after 6 days.

Parker is sometimes mean on steroids and other times he is just really hyper. He was in a decent mood this time but exploding with energy. That Friday night, he didn’t go to sleep until midnight. He didn’t nap much the next day either. By dinner time on Saturday, Wil looked at me and said let’s go to Menards. We ate dinner at Salsarita’s and headed to Menards. Parker was wild, and we let him run the aisles for over an hour.

 

 

We had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Brauer the next Tuesday, Jan 22. She was happy with how much better Parker’s lungs sounded. She decided to continue the pulmicort twice a day for 2 more weeks and then wean him down to just once a day. She also wanted to keep him on Singulair. We were glad we were down to just 2 medicines. Dr Brauer also scheduled allergy testing for Wed, Feb 6^th (assuming Parker would stay well until then).