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I searched through and couldnt find any directly related posts.

Does anyone's child have now or had in the past, a constant non stop cough? DS's cough goes all day every day. He has been tested for mycoplasma and that was negative. It started in September, but is now much more frequent and reptitive. Could it be a tic?

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I searched through and couldnt find any directly related posts.

Does anyone's child have now or had in the past, a constant non stop cough? DS's cough goes all day every day. He has been tested for mycoplasma and that was negative. It started in September, but is now much more frequent and reptitive. Could it be a tic?

 

My PANDAs son began a constant cough that was associated with eating (as soon as he walked toward the table it would start, and continue through the meal, hundreds of times. Only around eating. We put him on 14 days of Amoxyl (assumed that he may have gotten strep again) and it disappeared. He then began a blinking tic, which has also since disappeared. I believe it can be a tic. I am curious if your son is on prophylactic antibiotics or not.

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I searched through and couldnt find any directly related posts.

Does anyone's child have now or had in the past, a constant non stop cough? DS's cough goes all day every day. He has been tested for mycoplasma and that was negative. It started in September, but is now much more frequent and reptitive. Could it be a tic?

 

My PANDAs son began a constant cough that was associated with eating (as soon as he walked toward the table it would start, and continue through the meal, hundreds of times. Only around eating. We put him on 14 days of Amoxyl (assumed that he may have gotten strep again) and it disappeared. He then began a blinking tic, which has also since disappeared. I believe it can be a tic. I am curious if your son is on prophylactic antibiotics or not.

 

 

He was taking antibiotics twice a week until about 2 weeks ago. We stopped them because he had severe diarrhea that we couldn't stop. It was causing him great pain in his stomach and just miserable. We tried everything, but he had no quality of life as miserable as he was. He still had the cough through the antibiotics but definately not as much as now. Teachers said it was just in math class before, now it goes throughout the day.

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YES! YES! And YES! This is probably a tic. When my ds was diagnosed, he had a chest infection which was the trigger, that turned into a "cough" that you describe, only to realize eventually that it was a tic. Didn't go away until 5months later, when we tried intuniv for ADD! Also, in the middle of the cough tic, he had a brief eye blinking tic. The cough tic is very common, I've seen posts on here many times about it! Now when he gets a pandas exacerbation, the very same cough tic returns and it always clues me in!

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My son has had a cough tic. It has resolved with his other tics as we've progressed through various Pandas/lyme treatments. In September, I developed a chronic cough - and eight weeks later discovered it was triggered by mold. Remediated the mold and the cough has gone away. My cough didn't disappear when I went to other locations because my body was never away from home long enough to settle back down. I think this symptom needs to be considered in the context of everything else before you can decide what the most likely explanation is. If antibiotics aren't feasible, you may want to see if an integrative doctor may be able to help, or a naturopath or homeopath. They often have other treatment options.

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My dd developed a coughing tic years ago. It started as a normal cough and then morphed into a coughing tic/compulsion. A lot of her tic/compulsions started as typical, normal actions that morphed into more. She had a stretching one for a long time. She stretched so much I was afraid she was going to damage the way her back and spine developed.

 

With the coughing, I told her she was all better and wouldn't cough anymore. She actually stopped. Of course, moved onto something else at that time.....

 

These symptoms all disappeared 18 months ago with her first ivig and never returned, but she only had motoric involvement when she was very, very sick and highly symptomatic. Her core symptoms were more cognitively based. Now those are gone too. We've been very fortunate even though she went misdiagnosed and mistreated for many years. She is on grade level (6th) in a competitive school, social, activities in art, robotics and softball, and displays normal preteen girl behavior. She does still react to immune challenges, so we are not out of the woods yet, but her life is normal now.

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Friends non-pandas kid was doing this - and they found she had allergies.

 

Could also be myco - you don't have ot have titer to have myco. As a matter of fact, if you had it in the past, you probably won't make an IgM titer, and if they only show an IgG titer they tell you that its probbaly because you had it in thepast. Do you know what your childs Ivg and Igg titers were?

 

And of course...could be tic.

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This can be anything and one must not jump to conclusions but check and try starting from the easier to check and treat (one valid way of checking is reaction to treatment). Remember and remind your medical professional medicine is not a black-and-white case of absolute knowledge.

 

Based on our experience, negative Mycoplasma test does not mean there is no infection.

An ongoing cough may mean one of several and can be figured probably up to a certain level of certainty.

The above intends to say

My older (24) non-PITAND had for some 3 years long bouts (lasting months) of low fever, weakness, difficulties to concentrate, and YES, ongoing slight but sufficiently disturbing cough, which lasted each year some 3-6 months and no one managed to figure, until one doctor on clal at a weekend suggested to me an immune related issue, and hearing Sandra's story, agreed with me that Mycoplasma could well be one option. Using an article on the immune modulation properties of Azith I managed to convince our GP to prescribe Sharon Azith for 2 months. She took it for about a month only because we saw reaction right away and once fever got back to normal and energy was restored for 2 weeks without exception, there was no reason to continue, and the problem never came back.

I had a case of coughing this autumn while the papers informed of a bad wave of MycoplasmaP, so after coughing for about a month I got the GP to try abx for a week - and I am well again. What worried me during that week was not only Sandra (PITANDS), who is still on Azith 500mg/day but the fact that I suddenly started suffering from tachycardia for no visible reason. One week of Claritromycin and the whole strange affair was over, the conclusion is obvious. This was Mycoplasma.

As to your son, get the ped or GP try mycoP suitable abx. for long enough a time (based on Sandra´s IgG case, it took 6 months to get her from over 200 down to 45!) if the coughi is eased or seems to go away, you got the answer. If not, try OCD med or cognitive therapy. Do not forget to consider other causes (because there is great danger that one diagnosis blinds both doctors and parents) and check for other infections, allergies (anybody in the family is allergic?), food, plants, pollen, animals?

The last thing one should do is guess a cause and ignore all other options. That is why one very stupid neuro+psychiatrist in Finland told Sandra in 2009 that her cough in 2005 was not MycoP (ignoring the lab results because it was IgG and not IgM...) but an OCD. Remember, inasmuch as we parents can be stupid and hysterical in our reactions so can doctors be, the more stupid ones among them sticking to algorithmic thinking for "religious" reasons and being totally blinded by their area of specialisation and other factors research on medical thinking and mistakes indicate.

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For 2+ months, my 11- year old son had a constant, debilitating cough. It was sudden-onset in March 2011. After all sorts of testing and various meds, his cough was finally diagnosed as a tic. He stopped the constant coughing by late May and had no cough, at all, by mid June. We believe that his coughing finally stopped as a result of abx and clonidine. Here's our story.

 

On Thursday, March 3, 2011, my previously healthy DS11 came home from school saying he didn't feel well and that his history teacher had even commented that he looked extremely pale and asked if he was feeling okay. I kept him home from school the next day because he still looked very pale, almost blue. He was no better on Saturday, March 4, 2011, my DH took him to the pediatrician...no diagnosis other than "a virus". From there it went downhill, fast.

 

On Monday, March 7, he started coughing and for two months he did not stop coughing...every 10-20 seconds all day long. It was a racking, unproductive cough. He couldn't go to school not only because he couldn't control it but his body ached from the constant coughing...he couldn't reach for anything or lift anything heavy because his ribs hurt so much. He also developed reflux as a result of the coughing. Then, one of the doctors suggested breathing techniques to combat the cough, the result was that he starting swallowing air and his cough turned into burping....all day long. That was in late April/early May.

 

Anyway, our pediatrician seemed to think I was the problem since I insisted on taking him to one specialist after another. Our pediatrician was definitely frustrated-- during one visit, she ignored my presence and told my DS to "just stop coughing", prescribed muscle relaxers and suggested that "mom might benefit from these, too." The pediatrician also told me that I should "get used to the coughing and that it is now a new way of life for my DS". I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I told her that i absolutely refused to believe it. I was shocked, upset, defeated, furious, disappointed, stunned...need I say more.

 

My son's symptoms were:

  • sudden onset of cough...coughing all day long, stopped the moment he went to sleep and started the moment he woke up. (His cough became so bad that he developed reflux. The m.d. tried to show him some breathing techniques, but, the result was he learned to swallow air and his cough morphed in burping, aka aerophagia.)
  • crazy nightmares/sleepwalking/sleeptalking (I was up with him sometimes 5-7/night)
  • had a need to "stomp" while taking a shower
  • silently repeats sentences without realizing it
  • extremely sensitive to light & sudden/loud noises
  • quick to anger
  • afraid to be alone on another floor of our house; afraid to sleep alone
  • major problems with fine motor skills
  • freaking out over dog hair (we have a big, yellow lab that sheds everywhere)

I spent two months (March & April) ruling things...my son was scoped, xrayed, asthma/allergy tested, upper GI, pulmonary function, the list goes on. He was prescribed steroids, inhalers, cough suppressants (made his cough worse), antibiotics (azith, augmentin, amoxicillin, keflex, rocephin)...you name it. He was seen by three ent's, an er visit, a ped gi, a pediatric pulmonologist, three asthma/allergists, a speech language pathologist, two different psychologists, and a ped psychiatrist. His strep titers were only slightly elevated, he never tested positive for strep even though I had him in the ped's office many times in the 6-8 months prior to March. Whooping cough test came back negative.

 

By late April, I had hammered away at the pediatrician enough to convince her that my ds cough/burp could be a tic and that it might be PANDAS. At the same time, I went to a new allergist who, thankfully, didn't rule out the idea of PANDAS when I suggested it. He also found that along with seasonal allergies, my son is highly allergic to dust mites. He thinks that my son's allergies might have triggered his immune system to have a PANDAS "response" and recommended that we seriously consider immunotherapy. (We are still on the fence about that.) So, by the end of April, my ds began taking Keflex (cephalexin), singulair, nasonex, and clonidine (for the tic). After being on Singulair for two weeks, I was convinced that he was suffering from the side effects...he was angrier than ever, seemed to be getting more depressed, sleepwalking a ton...so he stopped taking singulair. He continued with the abx and clonidine and by the second week in May, my ds was able to go back to school...no cough!!!! I should add that in late May, my ds was diagnosed with a raging ear infection in both ears. Since he had already been on a hefty dose of antibiotics, he received shots of Rocephin.

 

By the end of June, my son was off all meds. He has been completely healthy until early October, when he complained of a sore throat and started, again, with "the cough". Our new, "Pandas-friendly" pediatrician started him on abx, immediately, and he was back in school after 3 days. Cough was gone. So far, so good.

 

I hope this helps.

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My non-PANDAS Ds had a constant dry cough for weeks and weeks. The ped's office kept telling me that as long as there were no other symptoms to just keep an eye on it and it would go away eventually. At the time they were seeing a lot of coughing going around from various viruses. I continued to check in with the office and they kept telling me to wait. After vomiting at school because he was coughing so hard they finally paid more attention to his cough. It turned out that he was having silent or wheezing asthma that was induced by allergies. That dry cough was his only symptom. Very frustrating that it can be so hard to get ped's to pay attention!

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