Happy Wheezers

I took Eleri to see the head of pediatric pulmonology at Columbia yesterday, and the good news is, she's not seriously ill and she will be okay. The bad news is, she might be sick a lot in the short term, it might require further hospitalizations, and we can't do much to prevent it.

Here's the scoop as I understand it:

Basically, when she gets sick (as all kids do), her body can't handle
the mucous it produces, so her breathing is compromised and she's
more prone to infection.  The cause is either small airways or sensitive
lungs.  Small airways she will outgrow, as they grow with her, and the
problem will cease by the time she's 3, if not before.  If it's sensitive lungs,
it likely means asthma; the treatment is albuterol, which we're already
doing with no success.  She would, however, grow into the treatment.  
There's no way to determine which it is until she grows out of one or
into the other.
For now, when she gets sick we have to watch for certain symptoms
(rapid breathing, chest retractions or "pulling") that indicate a trip to
the pediatrician; the pediatrician then has to watch certain thresholds
(such as blood-oxygen saturation) to determine if she needs to be
hospitalized for monitoring and to receive oxygen.  If she's hospitalized
a number of times over the coming months, the Dr. feels there will be a
pattern established, giving him more information to go on towards a
diagnosis.
In terms of preventative measures, the best he could suggest was talking
her out of daycare to minimize her exposure.
As with all her encounters in the various hospitals and doctors offices she's
been to in her short life, Eleri impressed the pulmonologist with her sunny
disposition.  I told him how confusing it was for us as parents, because her
general contentment in the midst of alarming symptoms sometimes clouds
our sense of how worried we should be.
He said this is common enough that there's a term for kids like her:
Happy Wheezers.
I guess, all things considered, I'm okay with that.