In Retrospect

Thinking about the events that happened last night again, the exact thing that Amar was doing before he suffered the asthma attack was eating yoghurt fed by Sarah (his 2 year old sister). He subsequently spluttered, coughed and became breathless. Aida, a family friend who's also a doctor (see Nisak's post) who kindly came to visit right after we were finished in hospital suggested it may be an aspiration, a term which in context means that the yoghurt Amar was eating may have ended up in his lungs and created an intense inflammatory reaction that caused his respiratory distress. In hospital, I have seen aspiration killing so many people, especially the elderly. Think of it as giving a person an instant chest infection; a person usually will find it difficulty to breath, have a temperature, may become wheezy and a chest xray may show a shadow in the area affected.

In retrospect, Amar did suddenly splutter and cough after eating the yoghurt, and we noticed he did develop a slight temperature. However, his distress settled merely a few hours after the onset, which seemed more like an asthma attack. I don't know - without a chest xray I can't tell (but he is much better now, essentially back to normal).

Pictured above and in the post prior are the salbutamol inhaler and the aerochamber (or spacer) . How it works is you enclose the aerochamber around the baby's mouth and nose, and then spray the inhaler into the device as shown. It ensures, hopefully, that all the medication would be breathed in by the child and relieve the asthma.

Lastly, we would like to thank the medical professionals who helped us, uncle and auntie De who came to visit us after the scare and of course thank god, things could have been much worse.
Pictured above is what an aspiration pneumonia would look like on an adult chest xray (circled).