Fall Update

I haven’t posted much since Monkey hasn’t been playing soccer, which is his usual trigger.

But he has had a handful of non-exercise-induced attacks, which is a new and not-so-welcome development. It started out with a few attacks at bedtime. In a few cases, he had trouble turning them around with his breathing technique. I tried giving him benadryl, in case there was an allergy trigger, and which at the very least helped him to relax and fall asleep. He also had one attack on the school bus, which resulted in him feeling that his fingers were tingly. We went back to the pulmonologist who suggested that the attacks might be triggered by acid reflux, especially since they seem to happen when he lies down (except the one school bus one). They suggested we try Tums before bed. I thought they were crazy, but it did seem to help. Upon reflection, Monkey also realized that he does sometimes have heartburn, and can usually predict at bedtime whether he probably needs the Tums or not.

Last week he also had an attack during school. He called from the nurse’s office because he couldn’t get it under control. He didn’t to come home, so I went over to see him. He seemed ok to me but said he was still struggling to breathe, and his fingers were tingly again. I asked if they had antacids in the nurse’s office and they did so they gave him a dose, and he went back to class. I asked him to call me at the end of class to see how he was doing. By that time, about 1/2 hour later, he was feeling completely fine. This happened during standardized testing. The pulmonologist (I called between visiting him at school and hearing back from him) thought it was stress-triggered, but he didn’t seem at all stressed about the testing (which was no stakes for him, and just informational for the school). Since he hasn’t had any problems during finals this week (during which he has been somewhat stressed) I don’t think the stress trigger makes sense.

He starts PE next Wednesday. I have an appointment to meet with the teacher on Thursday to make sure he understands that (a) Monkey needs to be allowed to stop an activity immediately if he is having breathing problems, and (b) that he is not faking it and it isn’t caused by a lack of fitness, and he shouldn’t be penalized for this. He has PE first thing in the morning, which is not ideal from a reflux point of view, because he’ll just have had breakfast. I think he’ll be having Tums after breakfast to mitigate that issue.

He also plans to re-start the IMT this weekend.