A month ago my daughter (just turned 7) developed severe anxieties about being at school with kids who were, had been, or might be sick. She has always had an anxious temperament, and there are various other things going on that could have triggered a bout of anxiety, so we assumed it was psychological at first. But I posted about it on another parenting board and one of the moms there said I should think about PANDAS. I thought it was unlikely since as far as we knew, she'd never had strep. But then I read that it could be triggered by other illnesses or immunizations, and I realized that her anxiety had started exactly two days after a FluMist vaccine.
I should mention that she was also diagnosed with celiac disease about 6 months ago. Her celiac symptoms were always mild and have completely gone away since starting the gluten-free diet.
For the first couple of weeks, the anxiety was bad at school, but she was OK everywhere else. Now it seems to be spreading to all areas of life. It's not like our former child has completely disappeared, but the anxiety is obviously overwhelming her. However, she doesn't have any tics or repetitive behaviors, and her handwriting is fine. Her only symptoms are obsessive anxiety and urinary frequency (which is also not a new thing for her -- she often gets it when under emotional stress).
She just started seeing a therapist for anxiety and possible OCD, and we're waiting to see how that goes. In the meantime, I finally got worried enough to have her tested for strep, and she is positive after all. (The culture was positive -- one blood titer was neg, and the other hasn't come back yet. Sorry, I don't know which is which.) So she also just started a 10-day course of amoxicillin. Too soon yet to see if it makes a difference.
My question is, what do I do now? If it does turn out that she has PANDAS, I feel very lucky to have learned about it before going through the months or years of ###### that many families seem to endure. However, it also seems like there's no protocol for diagnosing or treating it without a history of multiple episodes. Would any doctor, even a PANDAS-friendly one, take me seriously after only one month and with (by comparison with other PANDAS kids) relatively mild symptoms? Or do I just have to wait and see if it gets worse?
Sorry so long -- I just wanted to give whatever info might be helpful. Thanks for any advice you can give me.