It looks like we got our asthmatic

Tonight M is sounding very much like she’s in the middle of an asthma attack—rapid respiration (45 per minute; normal is 20), rales, shallow breathing, fidgeting (a sign of mild to moderate oxygen deprivation).  I just got home from the pharmacy with some albuterol syrup the doctor on call tonight prescribed for her, and we’ll have to see if we can’t get her in to be seen properly tomorrow.

I’m not surprised this has shown up; asthmatics are all over my family, and L has the occasional run of it these days, as well.  Before we ever had children, L and I picked out our health insurance on the premise that any kids we had would be (1) male, since my family runs very heavily to boys, and (2) asthmatic, because we have so many of them in the family as well.

So we were all startled no end when T was born and turned out to be a girl, the first one in nearly sixty years.  This also meant she was a lot less likely to be asthmatic, since the disease tends to show more in boys than in girls.  She did get all the allergies both sides of the family could provide, and many ear infections when she was small, but her lungs never caused problems.

I was hoping we would get lucky with M and, as with T, we’d have a kid who has allergies but not asthma.  I don’t think it’s going to work out that way any more.  In her first year she’s had three or four cases of bronchitis, we haven’t found a way to keep her sinuses anywhere near clear and dry, and now I’m seeing symptoms I remember all too well from forty years ago, when my own asthma showed up.

The only positive thing so far is that, unlike me, her asthmatic tendencies don’t seem to be traumatic in origin (mine is badly complicated by lung scarring from a childhood case of pneumonia that came near to killing me).  Perhaps we’ll end up lucky, and it’ll turn out as a normal case of manageable childhood asthma that she’ll outgrow.  I hope that’s how it will be.

Time now to go check her, and see if the albuterol has made her breathing any better.

(Back…her breathing has slowed down much nearer normal, although it’s still a little shallow and fast, and she’s asleep.)

Hezekiah berates the incontinent undertaker.  Fnord.