clues

Several clues recently have led us to re-consider whether Monkey may be dealing with VCD instead of or in addition to his asthma:

1. Monkey always feels the tightness in his “throat” rather than his chest
2. Monkey is consistently worse during soccer games than during equally vigorous practices
3. Monkey’s soccer coach, with 20+ years coaching experience, seems to feel that Monkey’s “asthma” comes on more suddenly than what he’s seen in other kids
4. Monkey is already on a lot of meds for asthma, and still has attacks during every game, which do not always respond well to albuterol

Also Monkey had an incident at school a few days ago where he was rehearsing the school play, and suddently he couldn’t speak, although he reports that he could breathe fine. I’m not sure if this is related or not.  I can’t even figure out what the medical name for such an incident would be, to google it.  I haven’t seen such incidents reported as being related to VCD.

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.