Trouble breathing and shooting chest pains

[PhillyPA]

My 6 year old son got PANDAS this summer. It was caught early. He spit out his food for three weeks. Steroids and augmentin took care of it.

 

He has been complaining of trouble breathing. Tonight he got shooting chest pains about 10 minutes after I gave him his augmentin. I read the side effects and these symptoms seem to from the augmentin. I am stopping it tomorrow.

 

Has any one else had these side effects?

[Buster]

PhillyPA,

 

Call your doctor. Shooting chest pains and shortness of breath are definitely cause for concern. Both are rare side effects attributable to augmentin. Is the shooting chest pain more gastric reflux or heartburn? He may not know what that feels like.

 

Also, did your child have other movement disorder or subcutaneous nodules before the diagnosis of PANDAS?

 

Regards,

 

Buster

 

My 6 year old son got PANDAS this summer. It was caught early. He spit out his food for three weeks. Steroids and augmentin took care of it.

 

He has been complaining of trouble breathing. Tonight he got shooting chest pains about 10 minutes after I gave him his augmentin. I read the side effects and these symptoms seem to from the augmentin. I am stopping it tomorrow.

 

Has any one else had these side effects?

[PhillyPA]

No, he had no movement problems or nodules. However, since there is such a strong family history of rheumatic fever/rheumatic heart disease , I am now concerned about his heart. He seems pretty young to be getting those kind of sensations in his chest.

 

Is there another antibiotic to try that doesn't have chest pain/shortness of breath side effects?

[tpotter]

My 14 yo gets shooting pains everywhere in his body (chest, stomach, back, etc.) They have thrown him to the floor, and he has described them sometimes as feeling like a dagger or a sword was stuck into him. They definitely increase as he is getting worse. We took him to a cardiologist, and ruled out heart problems. He wasn't on Augmentin when they started (although he is now, but they're not as bad now as they were prior to IVIG and PEX last year.) They got completely better after IVIG and PEX last year.

 

That being said, he never had the shortness of breath with it, and I completely agree with Buster that you should immediately see your doctor. It could be heart, it could be asthma, it could be reflux, it could be the Augmentin. Personally, I would definitely want to rule out heart, especially if you have heart disease in the family. If you need the name of a good cardiologist in the area, PM me. He knows about PANDAS, because he's seen both my boys (my 17 year old actually has some heart problems, that we caught purely by chance.)

[lyme_mom]

Could also be a herx.if it feels like u can't get enough air (called air hunger) that is a signnof babesia. We had those symptoms during Lyme-coinfection treatment. Soreness around the rib cage is also a sign of babesia but most doctors don't know this. I had it years ago and theyvtokd menu had asthma. It was babesia.

[Iowadawn]

I, too, have heard about the shooting pain & lyme/tick-borne infection correlation. Also, the air hunger symptom. We have had these types of symptoms in our son. "It feels like I am breathing thru a straw. It feels like have something on my chest. It's hard to get enough air." These are some comments our PANDAS son has made. He has had shooting/stabbing pain here there & everywhere. Right now the complaint is in the VERY low abdominal (bladder) area. A horizontal shooting/stabbing pain. After Dr. K put him on Biaxin post IVIG because of mycoplasma these complaints have not been as frequent or intense. The irritability/mood lability/raging is a problem. Since then we have had IGeneX tests. We had a mixture of lyme results, the Babesia FISH was positive,Bartonnella IgM was positive (not extremely high).

 

Do you know, Lyme Mom, does that positive FISH pretty much guarantee a dx of Babesiosis since you are literally seeing the parasite? We did not take him off the abx, so all the PCR tests are worthless

 

We see the LLMD Sept 22.

 

Dawn

[lyme_mom]

From what I understand if you get a positive babesia, you have babesia; same thing with bartonella. Often its there but doesn't show up on tests. My kids were negative but treated for confection symptoms. It worked.

When i had the week of air hunger I was terrified by my inability to get enough air. It lasted a week and went away. Years later on a camping trip I believe I was exposed to Lyme and the latent babesia made it necessary for me to b treated for babesia before I really got Lyme under control. Over the several years after i had air hunger i would be bothered occasionally by sore ribs under my bra line. Thoughtt i was gaining weight but later realized it was babesia. I later realized that the occasional fatigue I felt over several years was Lyme or babesia. This was obvious once I got my energy back. It wasn't age or being a mom that was making me tired- it was a tickborne infection I picked up probably while gardening. Using my iPhone to type- it likes to edit my typing after the fact so I have some typos...

[KeithandElizabeth]

My daughter had very similar symtoms, in terms of difficulty breathing and rib pain. She also has babesia. She also had a grunt vocal tic as one of her tics and I could never figure out if it was an actual vocal tic or a breathing issue from the babesia. I think it was a tic because it went away when she fell asleep?

 

Elizabeth

[Suzan]

Could also be a herx.if it feels like u can't get enough air (called air hunger) that is a signnof babesia. We had those symptoms during Lyme-coinfection treatment. Soreness around the rib cage is also a sign of babesia but most doctors don't know this. I had it years ago and theyvtokd menu had asthma. It was babesia.

 

Interesting, my dd9 had to stop augmentin after 1-2 days because she had trouble breathing and became so confused she could hardly get out of bed. She would look at me blankly and just say "I can't breathe". I'll be sure to bring up with the lyme doc whenever we finally get there. Slowly working our way towards it.

 

Susan

[lyme_mom]

Some other signs of babesia are thigh cramps, nightsweats and fatigue. U can be totally symptom free and have babesia too apparently.

[Iowadawn]

The nightsweating thing that is suppose to be so indicative of babesia is not a symptom that I can recall being an issue. Now he gets overheated very easily and whooped from the heat--just figuring this is from the meds he's on. Dawn

[lyme_mom]

My son had that too before we knew he had Lyme. Two times he came very close to having a heat stroke on hot days. Once at soccer camp and the other after golf camp. It was hot but Nobody else got this overheated. Now I think it must have been because he was sick and we didn't know it. He never had nightsweats either.