Pollens symptoms and conditions

My son age 3 was diagnosed with asthma about a year ago. Since then he has been sick constantly. Most recently his doctor has prescribed Singulair. He is aggressively pushing it on us. I stated my concerns to him, and he said there is nothing wrong with the drug.. he gets all the news letters.. and all the things I listed was the first time he heard anything.. I asked for his to refer us to a specialist and he wont.. I cant find anyone for a second opinion..My son needs medicine- at night i cant leave his side cause of his breathing.. The doctor wont suggest any alternate and I am stuck. I keep reading about all the people who are not taking singulair anymore- what what are they taking? I am completely lost here!

I am an individual that started taking Singulair about a year ago. I've had allergies to weeds, grasses, and pollens since I was a little girl and have taken a variety of meds including Claritin, Zyrtec, Allegra, Flonase, and allergy shots. Last summer, my usual Claritin just wasn't enough so my doc prescribed Singulair. It worked wonders for my allergies. Soon after, I began to feel "numb" -- that's the best word to describe what I felt. I was depressed. It just so happened that my mother had had surgery and I had moved to a different city about the same time as beginning the Singulair. When I began feeling depressed and disconnected from the world, my doc and I contributed it to depression from life transitions. It didn't go away though. For a year, I isolated myself. I didn't talk to friends and family. I missed over 10 days of work just because I didn't want to get out of bed. I slept almost 15 hours a day, gained 60 lbs, didn't clean my house. I didn't really do anything and I didn't care. I felt so disconnected from the world. I didn't cry. I didn't feel suicidal, but I knew that something was wrong with me. I thought I was having a breakdown or something. My doc checked several things but all test results were normal. It wasn't until my mother seen a CNN report on Singulair that I began to link my depression to when I started the drug. I immediately quit taking Singulair and felt better within 4-5 days. After 2 1/2 weeks, I was back to being my old self. It was so scary feeling so isolated, numb, and disconnected from the world. I never would've thought about it being a side effect from an allergy medicine.

My daughter is 2 months shy of her 8th birthday. She has always been a very tiny girl compared to her entire class. She has had chronic asthma since she was an infant. Honestly, I thought we would not see her 4th birthday due to her asthma. Singulair causes many of these reported side effects as Hailey has experienced many.

However, due to the fact that she can't breath without it I tried to self medicate her by lowering her dose. Since she is smaller than most we tried cutting the 4mg tablets in half and started her off at one half every other day in the morning with breakfast. Then as she got used to it slowly ....we started to increase her dose. Now at almost 8 years old she weighs 45 lbs. and is 3 foot 8 inches tall, still the shortest in her second grade class. We now give her 1/2 of a 5mg chewable every morning and she does great with little to no side effects and the best part is her asthma is manageable. Hailey does complain sometimes of side effects (headaches, stomach aches, arms tingling) but without the Singulair she needs her treatments 2 times per day along with her inhaler and suffers to just make it through the day.

She still needs treatments if she is exposed to allergens like cats, dogs, outdoor pollens, to many milk products in one day, etc. Sometimes I take her off the Singulair for a day or two just to give her body a break. I sympathize with many parents but never got my asthma doctor to bring up the idea to lower her dose. My regular pediatrician said it couldn't hurt when I suggested we lower her dose, and it worked for our daughter!