It Works! It Works! It Works!!!

This was the exclamation that greeted me today as I returned home from a short trip.

Monkey reported that in Sunday’s away game, he felt an attack coming on and was able to prevent it by using the abdominal breathing techniques. (He sniffs in through his nose, making sure his belly expands, then exhales slowly while making “ssssss” sounds.)

He also reported that in today’s practice, he had a full attack that he didn’t see coming, but he was able to reverse it with about 5 minutes of the abdominal breathing.

We are over a major hump here, and it is very exciting. Monkey is so thrilled about this. He joked with his brother about how he had finally learned to breathe correctly, after doing it wrong all these years. Knowing that this is fixable in this manner has really lifted a weight from him.

Our next step is to determine whether he also has asthma. I plan to ask the pulmonologist if we can wean him off everything just before his next visit and see what his spirometry looks like “au naturel”.

Intro

Monkey is my 13-year-old son. He was diagnosed with asthma last year during spring soccer season. Right from the start, his doctors wondered whether there might be a component of Vocal Cord Dysfunction instead of or in addition to the asthma, based on his descriptions of the attacks.

We felt that the asthma was fairly well under control by the end of soccer season last year, using a combination of daily medications and inhalers to use prior to exercise. However this year, even with all of that in place, he is having a lot of trouble during soccer games. A number of clues have led us to re-examine whether or not some or all of his attacks are actually due to vocal cord dysfunction.