Today Monkey decided to try not using his inahlers prior to his soccer practice. (Of course, he took them with him just in case that didn’t work out.) It worked out fine! He did have one full-on attack about an hour into the practice, which he controlled with about 5 minutes of his abdominal breathing. Almost an hour later, he felt another attack coming on, which he pushed back with the breathing exercises. So, it does not appear that the asthma inhalers make a difference (consistent with the theory that these attacks are not actually asthma attacks).
Prior to today, he was using 2 puffs of albuterol followed by 3 puffs of Intal before every game and practice, and before other strenuous exercise at school. (This routine takes 10 minutes, since there’s a minute between puffs, and 5 minutes between the albuterol and the Intal, and I’d been concerned about how that would work with a high school PE schedule, so it will be great if further evidence confirms that this is unnecessary.)
