Back from Dr. Latimer with prescriptions!

[smartyjones]

Thanks for the encouragement! It's just a tough decision.... Dr. Zackrison's approach makes sense to a certain extent, but it seems they are not addressing the antibodies directly, which are the real culprit at the end of the day. Dr. Latimer is going straight for what she knows by experience works for a vast majority of kids. I wish I could do both!

 

Isabel - what have you decided to do?

 

after your post the other day, i was remembering when i was trying to walk the line between our ped and our naturopath. we'd just switched ped b/c the initial was so unhelpful. he'd been on 5 days of azith which was horrible. both the previous ped and naturopath were ready to write him off as a "carrier" - ped saying all was over and naturopath saying we had to work on his gut and more abx would make it worse. new ped wanted 30 days of keflex and sinus CT (which ended up showing all 6 cavities infected). i remember all day back and forth on the phone with the ped, the naturopath, my husband and my mom. i don't smoke but i was chain-drinking coffe mochas - only serving to make me more high strung. i really felt we hadn't addressed the strep enough - we went with the new ped and keflex and in 3 days he was back to pre-pandas self.

 

it is so hard but if there's something leading you in one direction, i say go with that.

[matis_mom]

Thanks for the encouragement! It's just a tough decision.... Dr. Zackrison's approach makes sense to a certain extent, but it seems they are not addressing the antibodies directly, which are the real culprit at the end of the day. Dr. Latimer is going straight for what she knows by experience works for a vast majority of kids. I wish I could do both!

 

Isabel - what have you decided to do?

 

after your post the other day, i was remembering when i was trying to walk the line between our ped and our naturopath. we'd just switched ped b/c the initial was so unhelpful. he'd been on 5 days of azith which was horrible. both the previous ped and naturopath were ready to write him off as a "carrier" - ped saying all was over and naturopath saying we had to work on his gut and more abx would make it worse. new ped wanted 30 days of keflex and sinus CT (which ended up showing all 6 cavities infected). i remember all day back and forth on the phone with the ped, the naturopath, my husband and my mom. i don't smoke but i was chain-drinking coffe mochas - only serving to make me more high strung. i really felt we hadn't addressed the strep enough - we went with the new ped and keflex and in 3 days he was back to pre-pandas self.

 

it is so hard but if there's something leading you in one direction, i say go with that.

We've decided to bring out the big guns! My husband is a lot more comfortable with conventional meds, and like a friend of mine put it, if you had all the time in the world, go natural, but when it counts, go conventional and fall back on the natural stuff if needed. I feel each day that passes is a day waisted, and even though I thought he was "not so bad" going through the evaluation with Dr. Latimer was painful. He does have a lot of anxiety, he's just keeping it all in. At home, it usually comes up at night. It really is wearing him down.

But I know what you mean about the gut issues. I will keep on the probiotics, the good diet, and some of the supplements. I feel the brain is the main problem now, and even if the gut suffers for a month, if this works we can re-evaluate in a month and maybe cut down on the abx. The gut will recover in time. I figure we need to hit the strep with all we got right now and once it's under control, we can look into kinder ways to keep it from coming back.

Now if the augmentin does not work, I don't know what I'll do... we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I am scared to do the steroids, but I feel we need to give it a try.

Every kid is different, so there really is no way to tell who is going to do better with what. As much as I hate to accept it, we'll just have to go through the trial and error.

I will keep you posted on how it goes!

 

Isabel