Allergies

Months ago, Daniel had a cough.  It wasn't too bad, but it seems to particularly bother him at night.  It wasn't long after having a cold, so we didn't think too much of it.  About the time we were ready to take him in to the doctor, it got better.  Over the next few months, we started noticing a pattern.  He would have a few weeks where he was fine, and then a week or two where he would cough during the night.  We also started noticing that he would cough quite a bit when he was out of breath, after running around and playing, etc.  But then after a week or two of it, he'd be fine again.

If you Google these symptoms (I know, I know), the first and most obvious thing that comes up is Asthma and Allergies.  We started paying a bit more attention.  We noticed when Daniel would roll around on the couch, he would often break out a little bit with some contact dermatitis.  He continued to cough a lot when he was out of breath, and occasionally at night, but otherwise was a very happy, normal toddler.

A couple of weeks ago, Daniel, being silly, was lying down in the dog bed.  Almost immediately he started sneezing, eyes watering, nose running, etc.  Finally, we decided to take him to the doctor.

Last Friday we saw his pediatrician and described all of the symptoms to her.  Her thought was that he was likely allergic to something in the environment, and may have asthma.  He's too young to do any meaningful test for asthma at this point, so we decided to start with an allergy test.  The following Monday, Amy took him in for them to draw his blood.  He was a champ - no crying at all.  He didn't even flinch.  Both the doctor and the phlebotomist were amazed.  They'd never seen a kid his age do so well for a blood draw.  We were very proud parents.

Yesterday, the results came back.  The test looks mostly at environmental allergies.  The results are a scale of 0 to 6:

0: Normal

1: Low level allergy

2: Moderate level allergy

3: High level allergy

4-5: Very high level allergy

6: Extreme allergy

Daniel was a 4 for dogs, 3 for cats and mold, and a 1 for oak trees.  Also, his current general allergy level was quite high.  So, tonight, we started him on Singulair.  It treats both allergies and asthma.  We'll watch him for a couple of weeks and then call the doctor and decide if we will keep him on it or not.  I like this idea because if he does have asthma as well as allergies, this treats it too.  We also have some children's Zyrtec to give him for flair ups if necessary.  We aren't getting rid of the dogs or anything that drastic, but we will pay extra attention to keeping them off his bed, out of his room as much as possible, and keeping him out of their beds.

I'll be honest, this is a bummer for us.  Not only because of how much we love and want to be able to have dogs long-term, but because Daniel loves them so much too.  But, ultimately this is just a minor setback and we're very hopeful that the medicine will control everything well.  And of course he'll continue to be our very happy, crazy little boy.