Nicholas is on breathing treatments again

Nicholas has to take Singulair and Clarinex before bedtime every night to help prevent allergy and asthma flair-ups. However, yesterday morning, he woke up coughing, sneezing and had a runny nose. By lunch time, his cough had gotten worse, even after taking a cough suppressant. He even had a hard time napping because of all the coughing.

Last night before dinner we noticed that Nicholas had started wheezing. His pediatrician recommended breathing treatments with Xoprenex and Pulmicort for the next 5 days. As I got the nebulizer machine out of his closet last night, Nicholas got upset at just the sight of it. He really dislikes the breathing treatments even though Daddy got him a special little dinosaur mask to use with the treatments. There have been two other times in the last year or so that Nicholas has had to get a series of breathing treatments. The most recent time, his pulse-oxygen level was so severely low that he was almost admitted to the hospital. Please keep Nicholas in your prayers!

Nicholas had a treatment before bed last night but he woke up at 4:30 am wheezing and having difficulty breathing. It is really frightening to hear your child struggling to catch his breath. I wanted to take the wheezing away from him but all I could do was pray for him and give him another treatment right away. It helped him breathe well enough that he was able to go back to sleep.

This morning, Nicholas chose to be a pirate and he wanted to watch Sesame Street while getting his treatment.


I remember when I was young and sick, my mom would leave the pediatrician's office and go straight to Sav-Rite drug store to fill my prescriptions. While there, she would always pick out a bunch of arts and crafts supplies so that I could have fun even if I didn't feel like getting up and moving around. I still remember the joy I had as she let me dig in to all the wonderful supplies she had gotten for me. Of course, after picking up four different prescriptions for Nicholas over the last two days, I've ended up getting quite a few arts and crafts supplies for him as well. Even if we can't chase each other around the house for a few days, we are still going to have fun.

Nicholas likes grilled cheese sandwiches but I usually don't bother with a grill and just toast it in a regular pan on the stove. However, at lunch today I got out the grill pan to make his sandwich a little more special. He loved the "stripes" of the grill marks on his sandwich. He decided to call it a tiger sandwich. But if he is going to eat a tiger sandwich then he must get out his LSU Mike the Tiger toy that Grandmama Owen sent to him. We got to listen to Mike sing and dance to the LSU fight song while eating our tiger sandwiches!