If one word could be used to describe how most people would see O, it would be “jolly”. As his parents, we are also privy to a lot of dramatic wailing from this particular boy, but jolly is a good word to describe him a blessedly large majority of the time.
Yesterday I took my jolly good fellow to his 3-year well child visit. Our pediatrician is a wonderfully comforting and knowledgeable woman that is likely already eligible for retirement. She and her patients benefit greatly from her commitment to reading the latest research balanced with by many decades of experience. As the parent, I am so grateful that she is willing to explain her reasoning for various recommendations and leave the final choices up to us.
At the beginning of the appointment, Dr. M took out a box of blocks and pulled out four and lined them up. He identified all the colors, the shape of the blocks, and counted them for her, pointing out that there were no pink or brown blocks, but that the windowsill was brown and the plastic coating on her stethoscope was pink. She asked him to make a tower, and he said, “I need some more, please”. He pulled four more out of the box, made two towers of four, and pulled out a rectangle and made a bridge across the top. Then he said, “You should not go through this tunnel, Dr. M, because you will bump your head!”. She laughed again, and said that in all her years of doing this little test with 3 year olds, that was a new one. The boys have lots of practice with blocks!
After she did all the usual tooth-counting (19 out of 20 are in), tummy-poking, and ear-peeking, we talked about the asthma. Dr. M was more reassuring about O’s asthma than I expected given his troubles this winter. She agreed with the doc we saw a few weeks ago that his asthma is officially “severe”, but also said that she thought it most likely that the severity will improve to moderate or even mild over the next couple of years. He needs to be on preventative meds until at least a year from this coming May, and we’ll need to work out how to limit his cold-air exposure when he starts preschool (it’s a good thing we didn’t go with the nature-center based preschool we looked at, because they go out for an hour every day unless it’s dangerously cold, and poor O would have had to stay inside an awful lot). After going on preventative medication, he’s gotten through the winter with no more prednisone and stayed out of the hospital, which is wonderful. He has a cold and cough now, and she said his lungs sounded great. Now that he’s three, he can take a chewable tablet, so we’re switching his meds to a non-nebulizer kind. He’ll still use the neb for when he has colds or other exacerbations, but he won’t need the 2x daily 10 minute treatments anymore, which is nice. That actually wasn’t as bad as you’d think – he was very good about it, and it meant that we got in an extra 20 minutes or so of reading with both boys every day. They beg for books often enough anyway that we should be able to stay in the habit, and there’s also bedtime and naptime.
The switch in meds means that we most likely won’t have to lug the neb to Europe, which I was concerned about. We have an inhaler to try with albuterol (the med for acute asthma) the next time he gets a cold, and if that goes well, he should be OK with no nebulizer for the trip. If he’s not quite ready to use an inhaler and mask, we’ll get a special order to rent a battery-powered nebulizer.
During the appointment, O, in a t-shirt and underpants, was asked to hop across the room. His answer?
“I would prefer to gallop, Dr. M.”
She laughed, and he did. And then he said, “And now I will dance.” And he did.
