Just needed a place to get this out so it's not sitting in my head! I have a 3yo boy who has struggled with asthma since he was 7 months. The first year was insanely difficult, he had no pulmonologist no daily meds and anytime he got sick it was basically an emergency/trip to ER. He finally got on meds and started seeing a specialist after last year. One year ago the day before thanksgiving he woke up sick, I remember thinking we would have to stay home, what an inconvenience etc etc. as the morning progressed he started having problems breathing and I had to take him to the ER, in the car he couldn't stop coughing/breathe despite how much Albuterol I had given him and I had to pull over and call 911. We spent 2 days, including all of Thanksgiving in the children's hospital. He was still so young and very confused. Hopped up on serious steroids, barely ate, connected to a stat monitor he couldn't walk around. He basically turned feral in the hospital and we just took turns holding him for days. Returning home was even more traumatizing, his doc had said it could take upwards of a month for him to fully recover as he had a type of pneumonia and so he was just constantly on the brink of an asthma attack we had to watch him every moment. It took days for the steroids to calm down.
I've carried it with me for a year. I have nightmares about it. He was traumatized after the hospital having to sleep there and never slept in his crib again, I had to sleep with him for months then we just had to get him a toddler bed. Every time I dropped him at daycare I would have a panic attack that I was going to get a call he was in distress. Time marched on and things have thankfully improved and been ok. But here we are one year later, it's the day before thanksgiving and ironically he has another cold. I'm laying here waiting for him to wake up. Trying to push out the negative thoughts that I'm going to go wake him for school and find him like I did that morning, struggling to breathe. That he will miss thanksgiving again. That he'll be scared again. This has sat in my chest for a year, everything that happened. Could it have been worse? Of course. But I want to leave it behind. I want to stop hiding him from the world because I'm afraid he will get sick. I want the anxiety that convinces me these terrible things will happen to ease.
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Definitely would recommend therapy to deal with this trauma especially since it’s bothering you so much a year after. I went after I had surgery and my daughter had multiple surgeries in the first couple of months of life. It really helped to talk through it all and to a lot of things off my chest. Praying that the anxiety lessens with all this 🩷