n’s Nebulizer

Last week, n had his 4 year wellness checkup.  Aside from a mild cough, the doctor declared him healthy and “low maintenance”.  The next morning, at around 5 a.m., n woke up with a hacking cough and he was slightly wheezing with every breath.  I called his regular doctor, who was out for the rest of the week; the other doctor in the practice was booked until 4 p.m.  Pediatric urgent care hours started at 1 p.m. so we all went there after picking up k from school.  Urgent care was packed, plus there was some sort of medical emergency in the parking lot that sent all of the nurses running, so we ended up upstairs at another regular doctor’s office.  It was quite the ordeal but after about 3 hours we ended up with a nebulizer machine and prescription for 2 drugs, 1 to be given every 12 hours and the other to be given every 4 hours for 7 days.

That’s our n, smiling even while receiving his breathing treatment.

It turns out that it worked pretty quickly, so we didn’t have to do the treatments in the middle of the night (thank goodness) and we didn’t have to do it for the full 7 days.  n was a good sport about it and soon he and k were fighting about whose turn it was to plug in the machine, turn the switch on, etc.  The doctors said it could be asthma, or cold-induced asthma, given his history of eczema, but it’s too early to tell since this was his first wheezing episode.  Hopefully this won’t become a regular occurrence, but at least we are better equipped to handle it if it does.