Wee Wheezer Update
Not too long after I wrote my last post about how we had to schedule a doctor’s appointment for Bjorn due to the wheezing he was experiencing, the ER called and said that a radiologist had found in the x-ray something that would indicate a foreign object was trapped in his lung. We would later discover that they thought they saw a pocket of air in the lung which would indicate that something was blocking air-flow. Regardless, they told us not to have Bjorn eat or drink anything for the next hour while the pediatric surgeon (!!!) reviewed the x-ray and that they would call us back.
In hindsight, I should have asked more questions but I think I just wasn’t really processing correctly what the nurse was telling me. Surgeon?! Are they going to cut my little baby up? Luckily, we were able to get in touch with our pediatrician who pulled up the x-rays and told us that they were probably just trying to do a bronchoscopy (sp?) where they would have had to put Bjorn under general anesthesia and search his longs and then, if they found something, pluck it out. STILL–a scary procedure.
One visit to the ER and five hours later, Bjorn does not need a procedure. The surgeon and attending concurred that Bjorn was wheezing on the exhale rather than the inhale which did not indicate a foreign object. What it does indicate and a word we’ve been hearing a lot more frequently in our multiple doctor’s visits is “asthma”. Bjorn was sent home with a tiny inhaler and a spacer and a face mask and we have to do breathing treatments with him now twice a day. We went to see a pediatric asthma specialist on Saturday morning and were told if wheezing were to occur again (Bjorn has wheezed before in the winter months) that he would need to become a regular asthma patient. So….that’s where we stand now! We have a follow-up appointment with our regular pediatrician next week and hopefully Bjorn will be breathing pretty again, soon. If he has asthma–well, we’ll just cross that road when we get there–but I know we have great resources in the Ann Arbor area to help him if he does.
you are SO LUCKY to have discovered this so young! my kid brother nearly died at age 2, just playing in the yard. went into respiratory arrest, turned blue, and had to be rushed to the ER. yay for good doctors!!
on the bright side, this means little wheezy will totally need a video game console so that he can play without aggravating his asthma. which means he is already on the path towards becoming awesomely geeky. you’ll have to get him a onesie that says “asthma is sexy”.