My dog ​​started scratching furiously at the wall behind my eight-month-old daughter’s crib: at first we thought she was just going crazy, but when we looked inside the wall, we found something truly terrifying.

My daughter was only eight months old when she developed what initially seemed like a common cold. She coughed almost nonstop, especially at night. It was a strange, dry, rattling cough, as if something were rattling inside her tiny chest. Sometimes her breathing would become so shallow that I’d wake up in the middle of the night and listen for a long time, checking to see if her chest was rising or falling.

We went to the pediatrician several times. The doctor listened carefully to her lungs, asked questions, and finally said it sounded like infant asthma. They prescribed an inhaler and medication.

I strictly followed all the recommendations, but weeks passed, and there was no improvement. Sometimes it seemed like my daughter was even worse. She became lethargic, ate poorly, and often woke up in the middle of the night, breathing heavily.