A few antibiotic questions again

[ajcire]

Ds is now on daily amox. for at least the month.. should he be on acidopholus (sorry if I killed the spelling)?

 

Also... he just finished amox for positive strep culture.. the last few days of the 10 day dose I felt he was doing great... less throat clearing, and just an overall mood change..he was his kind calm self. I never stopped the amox... he just went from what he was on for the strep to now starting yesterday 400mg daily (1 1/2 teasp. 2 times a day) and yesterday the throat clearing started up a lot again and he was back to being an emotional mess... irrational and stuff like that.... Please tell me to just give this time and that it is not necessarily bad that it was good and now bad... this morning so far is ok but lots of throat clearing... I hate to call this dr. back so fast.

 

It's all subtle that I pick up as his mom... on a good day he can get sent to his room and then be told he can come back down it's not big deal on a bad day he can get sent to his room and he starts with "I'll never be able to come down again" and complete irrational talk like that.. with crying and a whine to his talking. Nothing seems to go right for him.. like the world is against him.

[dcmom]

Erica-

 

I would give it a few days. My dd is doing well on antibiotics, but will have a short-lived flare up if she is exposed to strep. (I will usually find out a couple days after her issues flare, that someone at school has been diagnosed with strep.)

 

However, keep in mind, amox doesn't work for everyone- so I probably wouldn't give it more than a few days. My dd did amoxicillin and cephalosporin- she did improve initially, and then backslid. It wasn't untill we got on zithromax for about 30 days that we saw huge gains.

 

It always seems to be a waiting game. I am always apprehensive when I go to wake her in the morning- where are we going to be now?

 

Hope things settle down...

 

Eileen

[thereishope]

Once he went to a prophylactic dose, did he spiral down or slight setback?

 

It's important to remember that a child is not fully recovered after the course of antibiotics. Even though my son improved on amoxicillan for a + strep test, it still took months for him to get back to himself. He had times of reaching a plateau for days, he had bumps in the road with some setbacks.

 

This is where it gets difficult. Even if amox is "good enough" for your son, you're still going to see bumps in the road to recovery. If after maybe 3 days you still don't see ANY improvement from your setback, perhaps something needs to be changed. Whether that is the dosing of antibiotics, the kind of antibiotic to ensure strep was erradicted, etc. It's such a guessing game. You don't want to keep waiting it out and have things get out control, but you have to realistic and know the healing takes time. So much of it comes down to that you know you're child and (I know I'm starting to say this a lot in threads) but your "Mommy instinct" tends to tell you what to do.

 

Make sure sure son is taking supplements to help his brain heal as well. DHA, Omega 3's,etc. You can also try Ibruprofen in addition to you antibiotics to see if that helps with any of his PANDAS symptoms.

[colleenrn]

My advice would be to either increase the Amoxicillin back to a treatment dose or do another prophylactic antibiotic (Keflex or Zithromax). How much Amoxicilin was he on for a treatment dose? I know some people have good results with Amox, but none of my kids did. I think everyone needs to have a very low threshold of symptoms returning before increasing antibiotics, especially when you have had a recent positive strep test.

Colleen

[ajcire]

I just looked and he was on the exact same dose... It says 400mg 1 1/2 teasoons 2 times a day. Nothing changed... except that I think we missed one dose in the evening that he finished the 10 days... and I started back the next morning. Unfortunately we ran short (not sure how since I dosed him out correctly) and I didn't get the new batch from the pharmacy until the next morning. Could 1 missed evening dose have caused a big problem?

[thereishope]

That's happened to me before. I think it's the pharmacist's fault. They transfer from one bottle to another and they don't wait for all of it to drip down. That's why it's important to mark dates on calendars. Don't know the effect of mising a dose.

 

Unfortunately we ran short (not sure how since I dosed him out correctly) and I didn't get the new batch from the pharmacy until the next morning.

[ajcire]

The dr. wanted to do chewables for me this month which I was happy about not having to deal with the liquid but the pharmacist said the amox doesn't come that way anymore.