Transcript
FATHER
My son’s asthma was finally diagnosed – I think he was about five years old. But it was always something we were expecting. We knew that one day they were going to say he’s got asthma, and so in one way it was bit of a relief. But on the other side of it – well, we’d basically known this for years.
The process of diagnosis came about from another admission into hospital from an asthma attack. They literally just kept reading through his charts, saw that he had been in and out of hospital a number of times that included overnight stays in hospital… personally I think they just saw, okay, he is five years old now, these symptoms don’t seem to go away – so they confirmed that he did have asthma and then we were invited to go and see an asthma specialist through our GP.
We were quite pleased about the diagnosis in a strange way. I’ve always been quite keen for him to be into sports, to be quite active. When he was younger, you could see he was just getting out of breath and he couldn’t run around all the time with the other kids.
Managing medication for our son was pretty much getting into a routine, just knowing that whenever he wakes up he’s either got to take a tablet or do an inhaler. When he goes to bed he’s got to take a tablet, do his inhalers again. Whenever you’re going out anywhere you do need to make sure that you’ve got his medication on you at all times because it never seemed to be much of a pattern – when he was younger he could be absolutely fine one day or for a week or so but then out of the blue he could start displaying symptoms and be struggling to breathe, and he would need his medication.
We had to be quite mindful of the environment that my son was in. It would appear sometimes dust would start him off. Other animals could be a trigger as well – cat fur, dog fur, that sort of thing.
There weren’t many challenges day to day. As long as you were just constantly knowing that he’s sticking to his routine for medication and that you’ve also got inhalers handy. Not so much a problem at the age he is now. He’s approaching fourteen years old, so he’s taken a bit of responsibility, as he should. He’s always got an inhaler in his pocket – he knows his routine for his medication, so that means taking tablets in the morning, taking tablets of an evening. If we’re going to be in an environment where there could be other triggers such as animal fur, a dusty environment, you make sure you take an antihistamine as well just to give himself a bit of an extra layer of protection.
As my son’s got older, it has eased a little bit as the sort of pressure on a parent. He knows that his health is his responsibility and that involves taking your medication, having an inhaler handy, don’t put yourself into an environment where you could put yourself at risk.