Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Another trip to Urgent Care


Brody's asthma has been flaring for a couple of weeks now for no apparent reason. This usually happens when he gets a cold, but he hasn't been sick recently, so I'm not really sure what is going on with his lungs. Over the weekend he kept complaining that his chest was really tight and he felt like he couldn't breathe right. At this point his rescue inhaler wasn't helping at all, so I decided it was time to take a trip to Urgent Care at our local hospital. While the nurse was taking Brody's history, I mentioned that I remembered reading a couple of years ago that there is one type of asthma medication that should be avoided for anyone with a peanut allergy. She had never heard of this and didn't seem too concerned. When the Respiratory Therapist came in to give Brody a breathing treatment, I mentioned this again. I could tell by the look on his face that he thought I was some ridiculous mom who had no idea what I was talking about, but once I finally got it through his head that Brody is ANAPHYLACTIC to his allergens, then he decided that maybe he should look into this a little more before giving Brody any new medication through the nebulizer. He came back into the room shortly after and said he could not find any information regarding an asthma medication and peanut allergy. I remained adamant that I had indeed read about this on a reputable website a couple of years ago and no, I was not just some crazy paranoid mom. Just then the nurse poked her head back into the room, pointed at the Respiratory Therapist, and said "Could you please come here for a minute". When he returned he had this amazed look on his face and said "You're absolutely right. There is an asthma medication that is contraindicated for patients with a peanut and/or soy allergy". And it turns out it is a different form of the exact same medication they were planning on treating Brody with.

So once we had this all sorted out and the breathing treatment was over, Brody was back to his normal, happy, active little self. I did speak to his allergist yesterday and he put Brody on a short burst of oral steroids and nebulizer treatments twice a day for a while until his lungs are back to baseline.

The moral of this story is...Trust your gut instincts!!! And don't just believe that a doctor knows what the heck he/she is talking about! Remember that doctors are just giving us their best educated guess most of the time. But you know what? Sometimes we know more then they do! Several of the nurses even came into our room just before we were leaving and thanked me for letting them know that this specific medication should not be used for peanut allergic patients because none of them knew anything about it.

So for those of you interested, here's the scoop...

Atrovent (ipratropium bromide) Inhalation Aerosol is contraindicated in patients with a history of hypersensitivity to soya lecithin or related food products such as soybean and peanut. Atrovent Inhalation Aerosol should also not be taken by patients hypersensitive to any other components of the drug product or to atropine or its derivatives.


(Info found on http://www.drugs.com/)

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