This grievous personal tragedy for the Linton family and the horrifying failure of Sam’s school underlines further the importance of keeping asthma and its potential for seriousness in the public eye.

If your kids are old enough, consider having a conversation about this story at home. I’ve told my daughter over and over again, for years, “Never – EVER – be afraid of ‘talking back’ or raising your voice or whatever at school if it involves your asthma. If you need serious help and someone’s not listening, you make them listen and understand it’s an emergency.” So far, through four different schools in two different states, she’s never needed the advice.

More Evidence of Link Between Asthma and Stress During Pregnancy
There’s a longer post percolating on this one, so I’ll withhold my comments for now.

War Makes People Twice as Likely to Develop Asthma
This study of Kuwaiti citizens who lived through the 1990 invasion and occupation suggests war conditions double the risk of asthma in civilians, adding to the bulk of research on stress and its long-term impacts on health.

Bone Marrow Transplants for Severe Asthma
No, really. Check out this future possibility for patients who don’t respond well to current treatments.

Spring Allergy Triggers
Pollen tips from earlier this week

David Casarett, M.D. wrote the article, and in it he discusses how most cancer reporting in traditional media barely mentions death and pain.

He ends with this:

Nevertheless, the future isn’t entirely bleak, because we have access to a wide range of other sources of information that can offer a more honest view of what it’s like to live (and die) with serious illnesses like cancer. For instance, people are turning to social networking sites like Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family members who are struggling with serious illness. In fact, some sites like CarePages are designed specifically for this purpose. Those sites provide a wealth of facts and feelings and beliefs, raw and unfiltered.

And blogs, of course, are becoming a widely available source of genuine perspectives of real people. Honest, direct, and passionate, many blogs tell it like it is. Like the wonderful blog of Eva Markvoort, a young woman dying of Cystic Fibrosis, who shares what she learns from each day that she has left.

Eva’s blog, and many others like it, carry messages of hope, of course. In that regard they’re not so different than what we’d get from the New York Times. They tell us what we want to hear.

But they also don’t shy away from the realities that people with serious illnesses like cancer face every day. They tell us not only about the good days, but about the bad days, too. They’re not just about hope, but also about despair. That is, they’re telling us not just what we want to hear, but also what we need to hear.

Asthma is not like cancer or cystic fibrosis. It can be life-threatening, but usually it’s not. It is serious, for some more than others, and it is life-changing.

Blogging helps. It provides a connection and a shared experience for parents like me and for patients like my kid, but it also holds the chance to illuminate details and change perceptions of the chronic illness itself.

(Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO)

Hey! Guess what?

My family and I and some friends are going to do this thing in October called Run the Rocks, which is a fundraiser for the American Lung Association in Colorado. It’s a 5K, and you can walk it or run it. I’m kinda nervous, but excited. I’ve never run a 5K before.

Why is it called “Run the Rocks?”

The whole race course runs through a park called Red Rocks. My family goes hiking there a lot. It’s a park with pretty sandstone rock formations and a stage right in the middle of them.

(Part of the hiking trail)

I think it’s beautiful with a capital “B!”

We are running through Red Rocks and then up a flight of stairs around the amphitheatre. When we first moved here, we used to not even be able to hike it because we weren’t used to the altitude! Now we’re going to run it!

(Benches in the theatre)

The whole time, live music will be playing while everyone
runs.

(The amphitheatre)

Our team will be called Team AsthmaMom.com. There are already three teams that have joined.

(Hiking Red Rocks and being goofy with pretzel sticks last summer)

See you later–
Kyra

Please Note
Stay tuned for the Team AsthmaMom.com page/fundraising portal on the ALA website, coming soon!
–Amy

I have almost no experience with seasonal allergy alleviation. My asthma kid’s allergic to dust mites only, and while my non-asthmatic seemed sensitive to tree pollens as a toddler, she’s not anymore. When she did spend the pre-summer months with a perpetual runny nose, we lived in the Tampa Bay area, one of the worst regions in the U.S. for tree pollen overload during the spring.

But who knows? Here, out West, we live between the very edge of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain foothills. Allergy season in this area means grasses, not trees, and either of my daughters – or both! – could develop problems in the future.

Point is, I’m the one having seasonal allergy symptoms right now (I think), and I’ve no idea what to do.

My main issue?

Burning, watery eyes.

I’m guessing I should probably stop wearing my contact lenses for awhile, but what else? Got any eye tricks for me?

I took that photo from my backyard this morning.

Because this is Denver, though, one of the most fickle regions in the U.S. weather system, tomorrow will heat up to 60 degrees. Spring allergies loom just around the corner for us, but maybe the blooming has already started where you live.

In any case, have some allergy links:

Living with Pollen
How to limit exposure

Pollen.com
Local and national allergy forecast, updated daily

The Virtual Allergist
From the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology

More on Pollen and Ragweed
From National Jewish Health

prevents neutrophils (a type of white blood cell) from sticking to the walls of blood vessels and initiating an inflammation response.

Sounds good, right? Even better, one company’s already conducting trials on asthma inflammation.

Peanut Allergy = More Severe Asthma?
I feel like I’ve written about this before, but right now I’m too lazy to dig through the archives to find out.

HuffPo: No Conspiracy Theories! (Except Vaccine Ones. Those Are OK.)
Here’s Gawker calling out self-proclaimed “Internet newspaper,” the Huffington Post, on vaccine nonsense again, this time with a conspiracy theory/selective editing bent.

As for actual research on vaccines, read on:

Kids’ Flu Shots Protecting Those Who Don’t Get Them
Dear Parents Who Refuse to Vaccinate Because of Junk Science,

You’re welcome.

Love,
Asthma Mom
(and her vaccinated children)

The other night, I caught the second episode of “Parenthood,” a new TV series loosely based on the hilarious and often bittersweet 1989 movie with Steve Martin.

This new series, which marks the second attempt at translation for the small screen, retains the large, multigenerational family of the original movie. The episode I watched portrayed one set of parents in this family discovering their 8 year-old son has Asperger’s syndrome.

But this isn’t a series about Asperger’s or even the autism spectrum. It’s about the experience of raising children and being a child – in all kinds of circumstances, through all sorts of challenges and sacrifices, and fraught throughout with joy and heartache. “Parenthood” includes a single mom and a stay-at-home dad, among other parenting types, and nestling an Asperger’s storyline into this framework gives the writers and producers the chance to raise awareness of it in a truly compelling way.

That’s the key, really – to entertain people if you want to teach them about something. Embed an issue like Asperger’s into a fictional show through engrossing storylines and relatable characters (though it’s too soon to tell if this series is any good yet), and people might just pay attention and learn.

Take asthma.

(You knew this was coming.)

Along with a major national campaign along the lines of Michelle Obama’s one for childhood obesity, asthma really could use a television show, too. Rather, we need a TV series that includes asthma as a significant plot point.

Because the message, it ain’t getting through.

I maintain, still, that what perpetuates asthma myths in the public psyche isn’t a lack of resources or information. We have plenty of those. The problem? Disseminating that information through a medium that people who aren’t living with asthma will actually notice.

Think about this for a minute:

Did you go anywhere near the American Lung Association or websites like this one before your kid was diagnosed? If you have asthma yourself, then maybe. If you’re bronchospasm-free like me, though, then not likely. Before my daughter started experiencing flares as a baby, I certainly never did much (read: “any”) reading up on flares and beta-agonists and corticosteroids – because why would I?

No one reads about asthma for fun, so the best way to smash the hated Oh, it’s just asthma refrain is to ambush people with a strong dose of bronchial education. Through entertainment, of course.

ETA: At TEDMED this year, Neal Baer will apparently give a talk called, Does Hollywood Affect Our Perception of Medicine? That seems promising, though as Executive Producer for “ER” and “Law & Order SVU,” Baer will most likely speak about television and general medicine, not chronic illness. Still relevant, though.

As far as our issue goes, a television series only about a child with breathing problems would bore people to tears and it would probably rely on the tired and limiting asthmatic-as-weakling stereotype, anyway. Placing that character within a complex drama/comedy, however, and sometimes using the lung issues to examine broader themes within the context of the show would work.

Asthma has never, to my knowledge, filled this role on television in any meaningful way.

The closest example I’ve seen is the movie “As Good As It Gets.” Here’s the trailer:

Carol (Helen Hunt) is a single mom whose son, Spencer, suffers from severe, uncontrolled asthma. While his health isn’t the focus of the whole film and there are several subplots all portraying how people try to make connections one other, asthma has defined the circumstances of Carol’s life. She waits tables and lives with her mother, who helps care for Spencer, and she has no social life, at all. Early in the movie we watch her bring a date home, only to see him leave while Spencer’s ill in the back bedroom, citing,

Too much reality for a Friday night.

That’s a perfect line. It describes exactly how I felt about my own life when Kyra couldn’t breathe regularly. All that middle of the night stuff, her hacking away until her throat hurt, the throw-up bucket and my staying up to watch movies in the middle of the night with a four year-old who was flaring so much she just couldn’t sleep – it all felt like too damn much reality sometimes.

Another great line, when Spencer starts to improve under the care of a good doctor but Carol still fears leaving him with a sitter, comes from her mother:

Spencer is okay. You’d better start finding something else to do with your free time. If you can’t feel good about this break and step out a little.

Carol replies a couple of lines later:

I don’t know… It’s very strange not feeling that stupid panic thing inside you all the time. Without that you just start thinking about yourself — and what does that ever get anybody. Today, on the bus there was this adorable couple and I felt myself giving them a dirty look …

Which is also perfect. There’s so much truth in those few lines. They hit so close to home, I can’t tell you how much.

My specifics are different from that character’s. So are my frustrations.

But what nonstop worrying over a child can do to a person? The way that changes you? How it hollows you out and drains you, makes you afraid to want or makes you lose the ability to want anything for yourself? That’s a message that applies to all sorts of characters and settings.

Writing an asthmatic character in a major television series could make a whole lot of people understand the condition better and care about it more. “As Good As it Gets” shows us it’s a useful dramatic device as well.

Picture it:

- Kid coughing until she throws up!
- Driving to the hospital at 2 am!
- Grappling with employers and would-be employers over time spent caring for a sick child!
- INSOMNIA AND ANXIETY FOR EVERYONE!

You’ve probably got a thousand anecdotes in your back pocket, am I right? And while you probably find them more *heart-wrenching* than *entertaining,* they are most likely the stuff of good television. And by extension, good education.

(Script source here. James L. Brooks and Mark Andrus, authors)

The last few days it’s been me and the tissue box with a big bag of honey-lemon cough drops by my side.

Dear God, I’ve spent more days blowing my nose and wrapped in a blanket on the couch this winter than I have in a long, long time. The girls, too, and especially the Sidekick. Last Friday, they got their report cards and Kyra’s showed half as many absences as her sister’s. That never happens. Swine flu did hit us early in the fall, but as for the rest of this stuff? I’m guessing it’s fallout from our cross-country relocation. Either the new climate’s wreaking havoc on our Florida blood and bodies, the new geography’s exposing us to a different group of cold germs, or both, and our immune systems are all, “Hey, whoa. What’s all this?”

And also? Threw the ol’ back out Sunday night, too.

I am, however, healing. Plus! The sun is stronger, the days are getting longer, spring’s halfway almost here, and maybe an unhealthy winter this year means the next one will find us well.

But enough about me:

How’s your winter been? Sick much? Had a healthy one instead? About the same?

Lack of Maintenance Corticosteroids and Asthma Death
And even more fuel:

From that same meeting in New Orleans, a Milwaukee study was presented on asthma deaths outside the hospital setting between 2004 and 2008. In all 22 deaths, none of the asthma sufferers had been using maintenance steroid inhalers. (Like Flovent, for example) In fact, while a few had been using LABAs and/or other maintenance meds like Singulair, 20 of the 22 patients who died were basically relying on their quick-relief inhalers only. Substance abuse was a factor in a small number of the deaths.

Sooooo. . . . taking these two studies together, anyone still think the U.S. isn’t experiencing an asthma epidemic? Or that awareness and treatment information is getting to everyone it needs to?

Yeah, me neither.

Asthma Ups Depression Risk
You should read the whole article, which explains how the research discovered a link but can’t pinpoint the cause.

Just Look at These Photos of Massive Snow
Because after that list of downer links – seriously, is this week’s respiratory news section not the worst ever? – let’s take it into the weekend with a little winter frivolity, shall we?

My daughters were born and raised in coastal Florida, right up until we drove halfway across the country to move to Colorado in February 2009. They’re both excellent swimmers even though they’ve never taken a lesson. Instead, they grew up in the Gulf of Mexico and in our backyard pool, where floating in a swim ring gave way to splashing around with arm floats gave way to the little kid’s drowned-rat doggie paddle gave way to actual swimming and, in Kyra’s case, diving.

Now we’re landlocked for the first time in their lives and mine, and we live somewhere with a true winter. So although I’ve written about the chlorination of indoor pools as a trigger before, I lived in Florida and the issue was objective and intellectual for me rather than personal.

Previously

The Problem with Indoor Chlorinated Pools
My original post, with links to research and a summary of my own position back when Kyra was nine, in 2008.

Chlorination and Outside Pools
Research suggesting high chlorine levels aren’t just a trigger inside, either.

And to Play Devil’s Advocate, a Meta-Analysis of the Pool/Asthma Studies
In January 2009, I published this article by another writer. In it, he examines a new study giving more insight into the connection between asthma and indoor pools. If you scroll down to the bottom, you’ll find my comment reviewing the review and its relevancy to my kid.

Where I Am Now

The Denver area maintains a massive system of community parks, trails, and recreation centers with indoor pools. While the girls use them occasionally, we don’t swim there year-round the way many families here do.

For one, besides the typical childhood opportunities for team sports or dance lessons, this area offers nothing if not boundless opportunities for outdoor recreation and exercise. The Front Range of the Rocky Mountains lie directly to the west. My house, at the foot of the foothills, is literally a several-minute drive from more hiking trails than you can imagine. And the further west you go, the hills and sandstone cliffs gradually lead to the towering, wide-open mountain ranges and national parks my state is famous for.

Plus, I like living seasonally. It’s one reason I moved here, where winter means sledding, snowboarding, and skiing, and summer holds the promise of hot sunny days and swimming. Kids are all about the instant gratification so mine probably disagree with me on this point.

Finally, if you visit that last link above, you’ll read this – and I apologize for quoting myself here, but there’s no way around it – in my final comment:

I have no way to tell whether that trapped chlorine is inflaming her lungs and setting her up for flares LATER, even if it’s not making her actively flare at the time.

Asthma is different for everyone. What triggers one person’s flare may have no effect at all on another person. If you want to let your asthmatic child try an indoor pool, I’d say your best bet is to try it out with no expectations and go very, very prepared with appropriate medication/inhalers. Maintain informed vigilance. If she never flares, great! And if she does have problems, then you’ve a got a decision to make, whether the year-round pool experience is worth pre-treating and risking flares for, anyway, or if you should just limit swimming to the summer and outdoor pools and/or beaches, rivers, and lakes.

So far, I’ve opted for that last option.

In the Future

Who knows? My asthmatic daughter wants to join a swim team, and I’ll probably let her. A Florida childhood gives her an advantage that has her swimming circles around the other kids, so how can I hold her back?

But when she was younger? And spent most of her days flaring or inflamed already? Adding regular use of a heavily chlorinated indoor pool? Forget about it.