Asthma Again

After a weekend of coughing that I thought was a cold, I took Amy to Inoue Pediatric clinic. I never know where to take her! If I take her to the hospital, and I am wrong and it is a cold and not asthma, then I pay about $30, because it’s a ‘new illness’ not a return visit. But I really need to visit the same doctor to care for her asthma follow-ups. But the staff at Inoue seemed to understand my dilemma, as I said outright that I just did not know where to go, but I thought it was a cold, so I came here. No, he said, it’s asthma, but he gave them a recommendation phone call so at least I would not be paying the off-the-street fee! (I shouldn’t complain – health care cover here is extensive and cheap).

I was very surprised at how bad it was – the doctor – not our usual doctor, said she would think about admitting her if she did not show considerable improvement after two sessions on the nebulizer, with IV steriods inbetween. Once more, I insisted on being there for the insertion of the drip. The doctor was the same one who admitted her last time, so she had experienced my recalcitrance before, and did not argue. I hope she is beginning to see that not all mothers are panicky idiots, and sometimes children are better off with us there! (Yes, I heard the study that a TV does an even better job, but there are no TVs in the treatment room, so that was moot)

Then I went to the bathroom and wiped up the tears. On me, that is, because of the frustration at my inability to stop this disease! I always live in hope that this time, she’ll come right and she’ll grow out of it and it will all be a nasy memory. And it is always such a blow when it comes back. She’s been on meds since last April. Every time she seems to be coming right, something, like a cold, or the next seasonal change, comes up and there she goes again. The only time she seems to come right is in NZ, with its mild climate, making me wonder if she would not benefit from a longer stay.

But she came right, and the doctor wrote us out a prescription instead of sending us upstairs. She was a bit medicine-happy – she gave us theodur, which I had requested my other doctor last year to take us off, after my student Yoriko told me about a conference she went to in Kyoto where a doctor spoke out against it because of the side-effects, particularly on the heart – and Amy had had that heart flutter and ECG only a few weeks before. Okay, the ECG showed her to be in the normal range, but it can’t help but make a mother worry! She also gave us antibiotics, onon for allergies and musosyne for mucus.
So we went home, or rather to Baachan’s, and I went to work! Feeling stroppy and ready to bite anyone who dared call me on my lateness or lack of proper business-like attire (I still had my jeans and t-shirt on from the morning – I had not been home all day).