My older daughter was diagnosed with asthma at age 10 months. Her retraction was pretty significant at that point. The asthma/allergy specialist started us on the nebulizer, albuterol and pulmicort regimen right away. However, within a week after her first birthday, she contracted RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) and was hospitalized for 14 days.

The frustrating thing about that particular hospital visit was that for the first couple of days she was diagnosed with pneumonia, and the pediatrician and respiratory therapist put her in a ?croup tent.? She was always soaking wet, due to the moisture they were pumping into the tent, and her oxygen saturation kept dropping below 90 percent. I don't know if you've ever experienced that incessant beeping every hour during the night with a sick toddler, but it's something I would never wish on anyone. She wanted to be held, and I couldn't climb into the crib with her. Finally, at about 2 a.m. on the third or fourth night of this, the new respiratory therapist came in and checked her stats, looked at me and said, ?You don't think she has asthma, do you? Because this is the wrong tent for asthmatics and would make her worse if she is.?

I lost my cool and burst into tears at that point. Apparently, an asthmatic should just be in an oxygen tent, not a croup tent. Shortly thereafter, they did an RSV test on her (I had never heard of it before that), and we were sent to Tulsa. Her first night there was in the pediatric intensive care unit, on constant nebulizer. She was moved the next day to the regular pediatric ward, where we spent that Christmas. We had a few more RSV scares and pneumonia issues with her when she was a toddler, but, thankfully, she hasn't been seriously ill since we moved back out to the panhandle when she was four years old.