DATE: Monday, October 13, 1997              TAG: 9710120004

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BILL HENRY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

ASTHMA QUIETLY TAKES YOUR BREATH AWAY

ONE DAY last spring, I was talking to my wife about asthma - I have no idea why - when our daughter Katie jumped into the conversation with some news.

``I have asthma,'' she said casually, as if reporting what she'd had for lunch.

Huh?

Katie is blessed with a vigorous imagination, and I was sure I was seeing it in action. Never in her generally robust nine years had she suffered any wheezing or coughing except for the usual bouts with colds or flu. Nor had her doctor ever detected any problems.

I played along, though.

``Really?'' I said. ``What makes you think so?''

Well, she said, a third-grade classmate with asthma had brought this little plastic thing into school. You blew into a mouthpiece and it gave you a ``score.'' The girl had let her friends give it a try. Katie had bombed.

Later I would learn that the device is called a peak flow meter and that Katie's description of it had been accurate. At the time, though, I figured she just hadn't tried hard enough or didn't use the right technique. Then I promptly forgot about it.

But Katie didn't. At the end of her back-to-school physical, a checkup that had found her in good health, she mentioned her lousy performance on the plastic thing. She also told the pediatrician she felt out of breath sometimes.

The doctor seemed skeptical, but she decided to let Katie take a peak flow meter home and chart her results for a few weeks. When Katie blew into the device to show the nurse she knew how to use it, she chalked up low score after low score. Maybe the only person more surprised than my wife, Pam, was the doctor.

Katie was then given a dose of the airway relaxant albuterol. When she tried the meter again, the reading shot up.

In a non-asthmatic, the medicine would cause no change in breathing performance. In Katie, it produced almost instant improvement.

And just like that, an illness that is one of the top children's health problems in Hampton Roads became Katie's problem. Our problem. We had been thrust into a world of peak flows, inhalers, bronchodilators and corticosteroids.

Our new club was not an exclusive one. Asthma, a chronic inflammatory disease that causes narrowed airways in the lungs, is the No. 1 reason for admission to Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters and the third most common reason children are seen in the hospital's emergency room.

Yet, as common as the ailment is, I couldn't believe Katie had it. I associated the disease with movie scenes in which someone gasps and chokes while fumbling frantically for an inhaler. How could my healthy, active girl be struggling for breath if I couldn't see it?

In a follow-up visit, the doctor explained that asthma can develop silently, without clear symptoms. Katie probably would have suffered a serious attack someday if the condition hadn't been caught, she said.

As I learned more, I recalled hints from Katie's past that had been easy enough to explain away.

I remembered noticing that Katie's sister, Amanda, almost three years younger, was much better at blowing up birthday balloons. At the time, I figured Katie just lacked enthusiasm for the task. But now I know that asthma, though it can leave its victims gasping for breath, primarily affects a person's ability to exhale, not inhale.

My wife recalls feeling vaguely concerned that on beautiful days, Katie, who enjoys biking, dancing and shooting hoops, would sometimes prefer to curl up on the sofa with a Baby-sitters Club book. But it didn't seem too significant; Katie is, after all, addicted to Baby-sitters Club books.

Like a typical kid, Katie has adapted quickly to her new reality. Within days she was using the peak flow meter like a pro and inhaling two types of medicine through a plastic mask without a second thought.

She seems more energetic, more cheerful. She's sleeping better. Learning what normal lung power feels like has heightened her awareness that what she used to feel was not normal.

Pam and I still wrestle with our role, though. We remain perplexed - and not a little guilty - that we couldn't see our daughter was developing a potentially dangerous condition.

And we can't help wondering: How many other children out there are waging a silent, unseen battle to breathe? ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

COURTESY OF BILL HENRY

...Katie...

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