Importance of Controlling Mild Asthma

Saturday, September 5, 2009, 12:23
Asthma
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Nancy:

I guess the biggest challenge of raising children with asthma is the constant guessing. Am I doing this right? Or what is the long-term impact of using this medication on my child? Will my child grow right? Will my child, develop intellectually okay? Why does my child behave this way every time I give him this medication? These are all these questions that just plague us with doubt as parents, and so that’s why we’re here as an organization. Most of us here have been through all of this, and we understand.

And I’ll tell you what. The hardest one, out of my three kids that have asthma, the hardest one to control his symptoms is not the one with the severe problem. It’s my youngest, who has a very mild form of it, and he doesn’t want to acknowledge that he has asthma.

And so, we understand the full range of what parents are going through out there, and there are ways to deal with every single bit of it.

Erin:

So, in other words, your youngest has the lightest case but is then again searching for reasons that would make him symptomatic.

Nancy:

But his problems are so few and far between, he compares himself to his sister who’s so severe, and he goes, “Mom, this is just no big deal.” However, anyone can have an asthma attack that is life threatening, no matter if they rarely ever have asthma or they have asthma symptoms that they take medicine for every single day. It is a challenge, and we talk about mild asthma being a major problem for that reason and that reason alone. In fact, in Japan there was study that came out here recently that said in Japan the majority of people who die of an asthma attack, children and adults alike have been diagnosed with mild asthma.

Erin:

So, what do you tell people? How do you tell them to avoid these kinds of attacks, particularly if they have, say, a mild condition, because I would imagine if it’s more severe, you’re more aware of it and therefore more on the alert.

Nancy:

Yes, you’re right. If your asthma is severe and you’re dealing with it on a daily basis, then you are far better prepared to deal with it than someone who rarely has an attack and then suddenly they’re faced with one, and they’re not exactly sure what to do. And what I tell people is all asthma is serious. There’s two parts to asthma. There’s the noisy part that you see and you feel. Then there’s the quiet part of asthma that is there every single day, every day. But it’s just not noticed, and that part is called inflammation, and the inflammation that’s inside your breathing tubes, if you can imagine the cells that line your breathing tubes, swell, fill with fluid, and leak.

They burst open and leak the chemicals that are inside those cells that inside the cells, they do the right thing. When they break out of the cells, they do the wrong thing, and they cause like a greater irritation in your airways, and coughing.

Erin:

Is this swelling chronic? Is it something that needs to be treated every day?

Nancy:

Well, for many people, yes, it does, and for other people, no, it doesn’t. But only a skilled physician, someone such as an allergist or pulmonologist, is really in the position to make that kind of determination for a patient with asthma. So, the key thing to remember is just because you don’t see symptoms every single day doesn’t mean that you don’t need to know how to take care of them when they arrive.

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