Normally this blog gets a very small number of views per day — in the range of 5-20. Saturday it got 182. Today it has 87 already. This seems quite odd for a blog that hasn’t been updated in weeks. Another odd thing is that on these days there are no “referrers” listed, and only a tiny number of searches resulting in a handful of page views? So… who is suddenly reading this site so much? I assume it is some kind of web crawler and not really 100+ new readers, but if you’ve recently found my site, and want to tell me how, I’d be quite interested in the solution to this mystery!
November 7, 2007 at 11:34 pm |
Hi. My name is Richard Ubelhor. I have three girls, 12,10,8. All of them have symptoms like you have described. Like your son, they were all diagnosed with asthma. The breathing techniques I have found on your blog have been very helpful. Thanks
November 7, 2007 at 11:46 pm |
Hi Richard! I’m glad you found something helpful here.
November 20, 2007 at 8:51 pm |
I’ve suffered from what I believe is VCD misdiagnosed as asthma for years and ound your site by searching on how long a VCD attack lasts. I’m going to read through your archives for those techniques Richard above mentioned.
Thanks for writing about this. Nobody I know, including all my doctors, are familiar with it and mostly people just think I’m crazy.
December 13, 2007 at 5:33 pm |
So glad to tumble into your blog, especially because of your son’s soccer experience with VCD. My 11 y.o. son “frisco” lives for soccer and I hate to see asthma and/or VCD keeping him from playing the way he wants to play.
He just got a possiblle diagnosis of VCD on Dec. 11. frisco’s been diagnosed and treated for mild asthma since 2. He’s been playing team sports (soccer, basketball, etc) and running 1-mile jog-a-thons since 6 and had very few attacks resulting from these activities. We generally attributed to cold air and other triggers associated with asthma.
When he joined a select soccer team about a year ago, he started getting attacks during most games and practices – the albuterol inhaler which was rarely used before becomes a necessary soccer gear. Our pediatrician put him on a maintenance med, Flovent, to supplement the fast acting Albuterol. VCD may explain why the asthma medications seemed not to be very effective in addressing frisco’s exercise-induced, or more specifically soccer-induced attacks.
My minor Eureka moment after getting the possible diagnosis and reading up on VCD — maybe when he took himself out in the middle of the practice/game, it was the actual physical break and not the albuterol that helped him get back into the practice/game minutes later.
There are a lot good info and links to fully digest from your blog right now, but I plan to come back and reread as we get further into testing, diagnosis and treatment for frisco’s VCD, if that turns out to be the cause. Thanks!
December 13, 2007 at 8:28 pm |
Pat, ask your son where the tightness is that he feels. My son pointed consistently to his neck/throat rather than his chest, which was a big clue.
There definitely seems to be something about soccer. A lot of the information about exercise-induced VCD in young athletes seems to include case-studies where the sport involved is soccer.
There’s also definitely a correlation to moving up to a higher level of competition (select soccer, in your son’s case). This may cause some “performance anxiety” which can contribute to the VCD attacks.
This post talks about the simple breathing exercise that my son learned to help control the VCD.
Also keep in mind that gastroesophageal reflux can trigger a VCD attack, so you should make sure you son doesn’t eat too much *right* before a game or practice.
Good luck to you in sorting out your son’s mystery!
January 15, 2008 at 5:49 am |
I read about your blog from my friends page, who has a daughter just diagnosed with VCD. I thought that it was great the way you were willing to reach out to her and share your story as well. My son has asthma (confirmed – BIG TIME!), and we have shared war stories over asthma and allergies for years. I guess…to make this simple…I want to thank you for being a friend to my friend in her time of need!
Best of luck to you,
Emily
January 15, 2008 at 1:42 pm |
I’m always happy when someone tells me my blog is helpful to them (or their friend.)
I hope your friend will be able to make use of some of the links in my VCD Links section on my sidebar, as well as benefiting from hearing our story.
January 15, 2008 at 4:06 pm |
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reaching out to me it meant a lot to me. I’ve been hitting the links from your site reading everything I can. Here is my story about my daughter who is 13 and just yesterday was officially diagnosed with vocal cord dysfunction (VCD) not asthma which they thought she has had for years now. She plays some high intensity sports year round, her biggest sport is basketball which always seem to have the worst flare ups. This year she made the team but was complaining about her “asthma” really bothering her. She thought maybe it was that she wasn’t good enough so she worked that much harder she pushed herself that much more. And still she was having more problems breathing so we would go back to the doctor. They kept giving her more and more steriods, uped the dose of singulair, gave her another booster of a fasting acting inhaler, plus her regular rescue inhaler, and was making all of the usual comments about wearing a scarf being aware of her surrounding that would aggravate her “asthma”. Let me say getting a 13 yr old to wear a coat is hard enough let alone a scarf. And again this did nothing to help her. One of the hardest things for me to get the doctor to understand was how much more intense her sports was than what the doctor was visuallizing. Anyway the doctor finally said she would have to see a pulmonlogist to get to the root of her “asthma”. I was forunate that we seen a great doctor that really listened to what was going on with my child. When my child started talking to the doctor and I kept my mouth shut (which was hard) we really started getting to the root of the problem. She asked one question “Tell me about your day and when you need your rescue inhaler”. I let my daughter answer she was able to tell the doctor things I was unaware of, such as, she was taking her inhaler everyday for choir. The doctor and my daughter kept talking and I listened. She checked that very day for allergies, and ordered her test for the exercise test on the tread mill. My daughter didn’t have allergies much to my surprise, and she did have an “attack” while on the treadmill which was great for them to see exactly what was going on. We start the breathing therapy or whatever it is called. (I’m still learning the terminology sorry) next week. I always knew that she wasn’t like the other kids with asthma I had seen. She can still do her sports the way she wants to with just as much drive as ever, only now she will have the tools to do them. Thank you again, and good luck to you and your son. Sincerely, Michelle
January 15, 2008 at 9:19 pm |
Michelle, I’m glad to have found you! (I have a google alert for “Vocal Cord Dysfunction” so I usually see when something new comes up, or blogs where people are talking about it.)
If you’ve had a chance to read my blog “from the beginning” you will see that my son’s story is very similar to your daughter’s! He is doing so much better now. The one thing that really made me feel better when we were figuring this out was an article I pointed to about Long-Term outcomes of VCD. The long-term prognosis is excellent! It is such a relief to have him off all these unnecessary asthma medications and to have some tools (breathing exercises) to get the attacks under control himself. One thing we are learning is that it seems that some GE reflux may be contributing to my son’s attacks. He started having them occasionally at bedtime (which I haven’t blogged about yet) and taking antacid (tums) before bed seems to help prevent or reverse those. He also dropped off the inspiratory muscle training that he had started last spring, but is about to start again (as soon as he can find his trainer in that disaster of a bedroom…) in preparation for PE which starts next week. I also just asked his guidance counselor to set us up an appointment with his PE teachers so they will understand that he may need to step out to get his breathing under control, and it is not because he is in poor shape or “faking” to get out of doing something he doesn’t want to do. So, we’ll see how all that goes! But really, once you know what it is, that’s the huge thing. Managing it is relatively easy for most people, as I hope it will be for your daughter! Best of luck to you and your daughter! I’ve got your blog in my RSS reader, so I’ll be looking forward to an update.
February 18, 2008 at 5:21 am |
I found your blog while doing a google search on VCD. My 15 year old daughter was initially diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma by her pediatrician back in September when her high school soccer coach felt that she appeared to be struggling with her play, as opposed to when she had been attending captain’s practices and tryouts in July through August. At first she felt as if her 2 prescribed inhalers were helping her perform better, but as time went on she felt that the inhalers weren’t helping her at all. She reported that she felt as if she were “breathing through a straw” when she was running during practices and at games, yet she never wheezed nor coughed, and felt better after 5 minutes. After several return visits to her pediatrician, I finally requested a referral to see a pediatric pulmonary physician. Though we had to wait 6 weeks for an appointment, he spent a lot of time with her and had her go through the spirometry testing. I had stumbled upon VCD while researching exercise-induced asthma online, and was relieved when the pulmonary dr. brought this up as a possibility. My daughter went through the exercise test at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia last week. She actually has emailed the pulmonologist to ask him if there’s anything that she can do while waiting for the test results to come back. She has 2 soccer tournaments coming up next month where college coaches may be watching her team, and she’s apprehensive that she won’t be able to play as well as she usually does. She’s also a high achiever who tends to stress about her grades (she has a 4.0 GPA). I’ve read several articles where the authors say that VCD has an affinity for high-achieving athletes. I just wanted to thank you for posting your blog as it’s been very helpful to me in my quest to find out what’s wrong with my daughter. I’ve also forwarded what you’ve written to my daughter, so that she can follow the trials and tribulations of one of her peers, and perhaps gain some insight. If it turns out that my daughter does not have VCD, perhaps someone else can offer some other possibilities. In the meantime, thank you again for sharing and I wish your son and your family only the best.
February 18, 2008 at 6:03 am |
Thank you, Colette! I wish you and your daughter the same.
My best short-term advice for your daughter would be:
- don’t eat or drink much right before the game, as VCD is often triggered by refulx
- try to concentrate on abdominal breathing, and relaxed posture (no tight shoulders or clenched fists) during running — it is best if she can practice this outside of a game situation
- whenever there is a little break in the action, try to think about the abdominal breathing and relaxed posture again
- try the sniff/hiss breathing technique if she thinks she feels an attack coming on, or if she has an attack
Good luck to her with her tournaments!