Eye blinking in 16 month old

[aprilprescan]

Hi. New here. I am 33 years old and have had TS since I was 12. My son is 16 months old, and over the summer we noticed he started to blink his eyes rather hard when watching TV. Of course, the first thing that came to mind was TS. If I remember correctly, he got sick shortly after that and then the blinking stopped. We went on vacation, and drove 14 hours playing the DVD player on and off with no eye blinking, but on vacation, he got sick again, and blinked on and off watching the DVD on the way home. Now, anytime he watched TV, he starts to blink. And it also seems that even after he is done watching TV, he will spend the rest of the night eye blinking. He seems to also do it more when he is tired and about to get sick, or just getting over being sick. I thought we had years before he would show symptoms of TS, if he has it. Can this be TS? I am sick to death about this, as I so badly don't want TS for my baby....

[CSP]

Welcome april,

 

Has your son had any vaccines?

 

Do you think you would like to remove the TV for a time to see if you see any change?

 

You say he was sick, was that a cold/flu or strep?

 

CP

[aprilprescan]

Hi. No hae has had zero vaccines. (one of the reasons is because I was fully vaccinated and no one in my family but me has TS...so I thought there might have been a correlation there) no vaccines. he has also never had any medicines, including antibiotics. We have removed TV almost completely. He does it sometimes when the TV is not even on. But it is most aggrevated by moving objects on a screen. I believe that he had a bad cold or a flu (no fever) during the summer. I have no idea if it was strep though.....

[EAMom]

re possible PANDAS: I would start by getting a strep throat culture on your son...do the 72 hour culture if the rapid is neg. I would also rec. culturing family members to check for carriers. Our non-pandas dd is an assymptomatic carrier and our PANDAS dd (on daily abs) will react if her non-pandas sister is positive. Cultures aren't 100% (eg. strep can hide out in the sinuses which can be difficult to culture) but they are an excellent place to start.

 

Also, be aware that some PANDAS kids get tics/behavior changes from strep with NO other symptoms (no fever, no sore throat)...so just b/c there isn't a sore throat, doesn't mean strep isn't there!

 

Please feel free to post any PANDAS questions on the Pandas forum...there are lots of parents there that will help you out (they don't necessarily check the tourettes forum).