How to Recognize Asthma
- Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 12:29
- Asthma
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- Erin:
- I was thinking about your three children and how one is more severe than the others, and I wonder what warning signs do you look for in your child in terms of asthma? I mean, I understand it can go undiagnosed for quite some time in adults as well.
- Nancy:
- Well, when the asthma symptoms are severe, it’s pretty easy to diagnose. But, for example, my son Dan, we didn’t know that his chronic coughing whenever he was exercising was asthma. We just thought he just was overexerting himself, but he was this athlete with this gung-ho personality, and there was going to be nothing to stop him. He was a teenager, and I would go to his practices during basketball, and I would see that he would stop about halfway through running across the court, and he would lean down and put his hands on his knees, and he would lift his chin up like he was gasping for air. And so I recognized – I’d seen a picture in a book at that time – that this was a stance that athletes will often take when they have asthma.
So, ironically, when I asked him, “Now, are you having trouble breathing?” he says, “You know, my chest makes funny sounds like Brooke’s when I’m exercising.”
And so, sure enough, I took him to the doctor and right away diagnosed asthma. So, he was able to treat his asthma before he exercised by using an inhaled bronchodilator, a medication to relax the airways so that they didn’t tense up when he was exercising.
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