The Obvious is Now Official

We took Bodey to the Allergy and Asthma specialist on Thursday and learned that he officially has asthma and excema. This visit has been a long time coming. In the back of my head I thought that as soon as we take him there, he will magically be better. Once I realized that I'm completely wrong, I was still anxious to go learn how to better manage everything at home and to minimize all these doctor's visits. Hopefully we've accomplished this. The dr. upped his dosages of his daily treatments. Now he will take 4 puffs of his Flovent inhaler a day. Then she laid out different "zones" for us. On a healthy, daily basis, he is in the green zone. At the first signs of any type of cold or virus, we need to bump him up to the yellow zone and start giving him albuterol. This will hopefully prevent the virus from moving into his lungs and him getting pneumonia. If he gets worse in this zone we move into the red zone and give him an oral steroid and most likely take him to the doctor. She said with time we will even become comfortable enough to manage the red zone from home and my motherly instincts will let me know when he needs to be seen. Right now his asthma is viral induced, which pretty much just means that any little virus will irritate his airways and cause them to inflame and fill with mucus. So, now my job is to prevent this from happening. Sheesh, that's a lot on my shoulders... I hope I can do it! Also, with viral induced asthma, the summers are usually a lot better. The doctor said that most likely May-August will be pretty low-key, and then we'll have to hit it hard again in the fall. I'm just glad she gave me a little piece of mind and education. Wish us luck!