The evil of Asthma... or is it?

One night in the early morning hours I lay there in bed struggling to force myself back to sleep.   Then I hear it... Maxx has woken up coughing this horrible cough. ( unlike croup or whooping cough) he crying as if in pain.   I rush to his room to find him clawing at his throat screaming in terror now.

I rush Maxx to my room and get a nebulizer treatment started.  Believing this to be another episode of something in  This isn't his first time using a nebulizer.  (Bronchiolitis in the past). The difference this time.. He wants nothing to do with it and starts screaming louder.  As I have him sitting in my lap he is biting at me, scratching and starts to spin like a gator.  I wake my husband in the worst possible way by yelling "Help me!" Over our child's screams. ( how he slept up to this point I don't understand)

I watch as my husband calms him to take a treatment.  My poor  husband is an old pro at breathing treatments having had them himself from the time he three.  I see the guilt in his face as he blames himself for passing this lung disease to our boys.

We rush him to the hospital.  On the way there his breathing calms, I start thinking they will say I am overreacting and send us away.   His breathing is still not normal, with a strange rasp.

I carry him into the emergency room.  As I approach the nurse station tears start streaming down my face as I remember what it felt like for me having my first asthma attack at the age of 12.  I thought I was choking on a chip during lunch while at school. One minutes I was coughing, the next I had blacked out and my friends were helping me to the nurses office as I clawed at my neck trying to get air.

As I approach the desk, I blurt out, "Please help my son.. I think he's having an asthma attack."  The three guys at the station take one look at me and rush us through check-in.

I'll never forget the hours after that with the many medical professional standing outside that glass walled room staring at us like a specimen on a slide. Not talking to us, for the most part just scaring the crap out of me.

I look back now and wonder is it my fault they diagnosed Acute Asthma attack since that is what I came in crying.  Why had no one looked in his mouth or at his throat?  If they had looked back then would they have seen the damage? It was very visible once we finally got our true diagnosis 6 months later in an even scarier incident.  Why had his pediatrician not seen this at his checkup between these incidents?  My faith in the medical community is not as strong as they once were. It just feels like educated guessing.  Too many times it's without even finding out all the facts first.