Help with food adversons

[SullysMom]

My DS was recently disgnosed with Pandas (took him to Dr Trifiletti).  His main symptom is food adversion.  Since September he has had a fear of choking and has only been eating soft foods.  (Yogurt, Pudding, Soup, Pedisure).   Within the last few weeks, he added scrambled eggs (which he ate non stop for 2 weeks then dropped it) and now he added pasta, which he has been having every night for dinner.  I have a phone call scheduled with Dr T on the 18th to go over his bloodwork and see what treatment he suggests.  All other symptoms (intense panic, seperation anxiety, mood swings) have all gotten much better but his food adversion (and fear of choking ) hasn't.    For any of you that have gone through this.  Will merely prescribing an abx, actually make it want to eat again and get rid of the fear?   Or will I have to go with a low dose anti-depressant-therapy?    He is seeing an eating therapist once a week.  I will keep going to her because I feel like she can really help him long term (he's always been a picky eater)  but just curious... what finally got your child to eat again and how long did it take?  Thanks so much for any advice, this community has been so helpful and truly a life saver for me.  

[bws1565]

Interestingly, for us removing the focus of "eating" was the best treatment.  I think that as long as I wanted to make DD eat well and have her be healthy, she used food as a means of getting our utmost attention.  My tactic of ignoring what she eats, just making sure that she has good food available and letting her pick her own choices worked best.  By today, I don't even seriously serve her anything.  She is old enough to buy and prepare her own foods, or serve herself of what I cooked for the rest of the family.

Once the focus was removed I was stunned when she started liking foods she previously disliked, and eating lots of healthy good food.  She is now a health food freak, and this is not coming from me. (Perhaps even to the point of obsession....but I will not focus on that either )

 

Your are not mentioning your child age.  If he is young enough, this might not be relevant, but DD18 started this when she was about 4!

[bigmighty]

For DS the food aversion and difficulty swallowing is directly related to brain inflammation.  Years ago, we found that if he took ibuprofen 3x a day for a few days, he had much less trouble. Now he takes turmeric capsules twice daily which seems to make things much easier on the food front.  Once in a while, he still gets an occasional challenge with eating.  When that happens he takes 5 mg prednisone for a few days along with daily antibiotics and gets things right back in line.  He still self-restricts and has a limited diet, but is doing much better than before he added the turmeric.

[bobh]

As counterintuitive as it might seem, it is possible that the abx will help the food aversion.  You can only try and see.