If you’ve read this site for any length of time, you know my daughter’s near-constant coughing during flares will, even now, drive me to that cliff’s edge of a nervous breakdown on the worst nights. AG has no love for the coughing either, obviously, especially since it drives her to the point of hoarseness, a sore throat, and on the worst nights, aching ribs.
As a parent OR a patient, which asthma symptom do you hate the most?
You always come up with great questions! I’d say the one I hate most is the tightening of my neck muscles with the worst flares. It makes the attack feel so much worse (scarier!) and it makes me a less efficient breather.
I agree with you about the coughing. My little boy’s cough keeps me holding my breath at night. He’s also at a stage where he prefers screaming to going to sleep (18 months). Right now, he’s sick and I have to listen to him scream/cough/scream until he goes to sleep. So scary and sad!
Though this is probably more of a chronic symptom, hands down and without a doubt, for me it’s air-trapping! The inability exhale completely. Feels like someone sitting on your chest, just enough where it’s uncomfortable to breath.
I’m one of odd ball asthmatics who rarely coughs, but I can see how that could get nerve racking.
The neck muscle tightening that Danielle mentioned, sounds scary indeed.
I don’t know if it’s actually a symptom…but in the middle of a flare, when the coughing goes on and on and on….sometimes, when it stops…it sends me racing up the stairs to make sure she’s still breathing at all.
I think the one my AG would complain the most about is the lung pain. She tends to suffer from “tight chest” and lung pain quite often, even if she SOUNDS clear.
Great question.
ooh good one! For me and my own mini AG, the coughing is the big one, though she too complains of feeling “squeezed” which is naturally upsetting. Also, the sleep issues!! she has trouble falling asleep, and staying asleep, but even when she does she wakes up saying she “didnt get any sleep” and is just tired all the time
For others, I think my coughing is the most annoying, but unless I’m coughing really bad people usually don’t say anything.
For me, it’s totally dyspnea that I hate the most because it’s probably what I find the most uncomfortable (and when people hear when I’m SOB it tends to freak them out, and I hate freaking people out . . !)
Oh! And sore shoulder muscles that start once the flare is over!! That’s been one that’s been bugging me a lot more recently.
I think I’d be scared out of my mind if I had to experience most of these symptoms. The stuff you guys and/or your kids have to put up with……
My son’s night coughing is horrible enough, but when it causes him to gag and throw up…that’s the worst and it makes him very sad. Sometimes his flares come with major nosebleeds, but that’s just messy not quite so worrisome.
The night coughing is bad, and like Sara C said, the quiet between coughing is nerve wracking. In our house, the worst is my AG’s fatigue and mood swings.
I’ve decided (after a 2am bedding change) that coughing until throwing up is the thing I dislike the most. Though she has chronic tummy trouble that causes frequent vomiting, when it comes from coughing, it catches her by surprise…rather than knowing it’s coming, and being able to get to her bowl. Of course, there’s nothing like a 1am bedding change to blow any chance of MOM getting back to sleep out of the water.
Cough, cough, cough……I often wonder why my AG is a “cougher” more so than a “wheezer”. During flares the constant cough is hard on her and as a parent makes my stomach so tight I can hardly breathe! Whenever we go somewhere like Target, for example, and she coughs we get “the look” from people. I feel so bad for my AG. It is not her fault and she is not “sick” (like flu, cold, etc) . That is something I have always had a hard time w/ as a mom. She has had asthma …well, all of her 9 adorable years, but she is a trooper…great swimmer & golfer…and her asthma is controlled I just hate those “flare ups”.
I know that “look” When I see it, I say things like…I’m so sorry your asthma is bothering you today. Just so that people know that I’m not bringing a tuberculosis patient out or anything.
Oh, man. We’re way more familiar with The Look than we’d like to be, too. If I kept this kid home every time she was coughing, she’d never leave the damn house.
Isn’t it funny how you can be out and hear a child cough….you can tell if it is an “asthma” cough. It is like our ears are trained to hear it. I always feel bad for the mom b/c I know that she probably has not slept in a few nights.
I feel that way too…if we stopped doing things because she was coughing, or because her tummy hurt, or whatever, we wouldn’t leave the house. We lived that way for a year. I never brought her anywhere, because she was liable to vomit all over everything…it was so isolating to the whole family…we finally just learned to always bring a bowl with us. Crazy what we have to learn to do…isn’t it.
For other people, it’s definitely the coughing. When I’m bad I can’tt stop coughing even to speak and then it’s my worst symptom because it brings about these absolutely horrendous headaches where I can’t move my head without almost fainting from the pain.
But more normally it’s the elephant-on-chest tightness because it just makes everything so uncomfortable and I can’t really concentrate on everything else.