Another ER Trip:(

I am learning to really dislike asthma!!!  Blaine has a cough variant asthma, which apparently acts a bit different than a lot of other types of asthma and is not down in the lungs.  Basically, he had croup recurrently and that is how we ended up with the asthma Dr and this diagnosis.  It is always when he is sleeping when he has a flare-up, so we have some rough nights but we can usually treat him at home with our arsenal of medicines.  However, Friday night, we quickly realized that this was not going to work - just like last Memorial Day weekend.  As usual, he was fine and then very suddenly wakes up at 10:30 with a barky cough and stridor and can't breath well due to the severe inflammation in his throat.  This is a very scary wake up for John and I as well as Blaine.  It was worse than normal this time and he was really struggling to breath at all.  After deciding that this deemed an ER trip, John called the neighbors to drop a sleeping Ava off on their couch (we LOVE Rick & Glenda!!) and headed to the hospital.  It is a horrible feeling to have your 3 year old sitting on your lap struggling for every breath.  I was praying fervently the entire way to the hospital that he would keep breathing!  Very scary and the 15 minute trip seemed much longer than that!  But when we got to the ER, half a dozen people quickly attended to him and got him started on a racemic epinephrine treatment and some IV steroids.  He was feeling so horrible that he didn't even really fight the IV catheter - that is a sick 3 yr old!  Thankfully, the meds helped quickly and he was breathing better soon.  After staying a while, he was starting to complain about wanting to go home and wanting the owie (IV) thing off of his arm so that indicated that he was starting to feel better.  I was thankful for my iPhone to watch some PBS cartoons while passing the time since there are no TVs or anything else to entertain kids in this small local ER!  By around 2:00 we were heading home though - again calling and waking up Rick & Glenda to pick Ava up.  Needless to say, this was a rough night for all of us and we pray that we don't have to do this often!  However, I thanked God immensely that this did not happen when John was gone earlier in the week.  John had been in New Orleans for a John Deere training event and had just gotten home at 3:00 Friday morning.  This made for two very short nights in a row for John, but I don't know what I would have done if faced with this situation alone!  Please continue to pray that we can avoid these severe flare-ups and that Blaine will outgrow this asthma in time!