Cultured Views

Our son spent some time in hospital recently after having an asthma episode during Halloween – nothing serious but the doctor at A&E decided his condition needed monitoring for a day or so and so kept him in for a little while. They did a range of allergy tests on our son and we discovered he is allergic to cat hair and dust mites – the cat hair can be sorted easily as we don’t own a cat, but tackling the dust mites is a more complicated area as every house has regardless of how clean and ‘dust free’ you assume you are.

I have stepped up the washing of the bed linen now to several times a week instead of weekly, which might seem over the top to many people who probably only think to wash their bed sheets once a month. I vacuum the mattresses and in his room, around the house, on a daily basis. The mites feed off the dead flakes of skin that we all shed in bed so that is what I have to keep on top of. We bought new mattresses for all the kids – a special one for James and something like a memory foam mattress for my two other sons who don’t suffer the asthma.

So far so good! with him now on a new course of treatment after a review on how we were doing things he is 100%, better than he has ever been, and the asthma has been totally arrested. Keeping him  warm in the winter now is a main concern – but to anyone with a similar problem…check those mattresses and sheets as the problem could be in the bed rather than in the air.