I am new here and have found some very interesting information here. My 4 year old daughter began having a shoulder shrugging tic and then an eye blinking tic at the end of March. Her little brother had strep at the time (she did not have the common symptoms at that time so we didn't bring her in with him). When the eye blinking didn't go away after a few days we brought her in to our pediatrician who did run a bunch of blood tests including an ASO titer which came back as normal (below 200). We went to a pediatric neurologist, who, although very nice, didn't help much saying we just have to wait and see. He did tell us though that perhaps she is predisposed to tics or Tourette's and something triggered it, like strep, or stress/anxiety or even a medicine. We had been giving her benadryl at night for a cold. He did also notice a puckering she was doing with her lips and asked how long that had been around (a while) that could have been a tic that has been around for a while and didn't know it.
She had a very minor sore throat last week and I brought her in right away for a strep test (whereas otherwise I probably wouldn't have but since reading about PANDAS/tics etc. I did) and she was positive and just finished her antibiotics.
I have so many questions I really don't know where to start. The fact that she tested positive for a minor sore throat that she really mentioned in passing to me makes me worry that I have missed strep in the past. She does not have any of the common OCD characterictics as I know them, but she does have many of the other symptoms that Susan Swedo lists in her description of PANDAS - so I am thinking I should definitely explore this possibility. We live in the Chicago area.
Any advice or opinions would be very much appreciated.
Lisa
