Skip to main content

Day 2 of Antibiotics for PANS

4.1ml prozac 4pm, tiny 1/4 of Clonidine 8pm 1 pill of Zithromax 4:30pm, probiotics 8pm, half a magnesium 8pm

Today was better. Ewen got a good solid 10 hours of sleep last night because I made him get into bed at 9pm and he was asleep by 9:30. Also I gave him very little Clonidine in hopes he would be happier the next day. When he got up this morning he said he felt good and was feeling positive. He was happy when he got home from school and said he had fun in PE because they were playing some really awesome beanbag game, which is really good.

He seemed to do less huffing today too. I went on the trampoline with him this evening and he was in a good mood and didn't seem depressed. He wasn't full of that Ewen spark and energy, but he had some of it and it was nice to see.

I had him go to bed at 8:50 tonight and he couldn't believe I was doing that to him. But he complied and I sat on his bed for a while and talked. He wanted to know what PANS was and I tried to explain it in my layman way. I told him that we saw that he was fighting off a bacteria when we did blood work last week, and now we think that when he had the flu and pneumonia last year, that it didn't completely go away. We think that his body was fighting it off the whole time and that was hard on his brain. Then with the stress at school, things flared up and what he normally could handle when he wasn't dealing with PANS, became too much to handle.  He said, "And my brain basically collapsed."
I said, well, yeah.
I told him that we treated the symptoms with Prozac and Clonidine but now if we can get rid of the bacteria that is causing his brain so much stress, that maybe we won't need the Prozac and Clonidine anymore, and that in the future if there is a flare up, we will know what to do.
He said, I think I should get a blood test every year after this.
I said, yes, I agree. I also told him that this stuff apparently goes away as you get older. But as I was saying those words that I had read online, that didn't seem very logical to me, especially now that I have been reading all sorts of articles about how infection can affect the brain, such as pneumonic induced dementia.
I told him that after we treat the bacteria that we think things should go back to normal. I felt weird saying that. So I also said, there aren't going to be any miracles here, we are going to try this and we are going with the science and that is what works.
He said, OK.
But you can bet I'm hoping for a miracle here. But there is just so much you can promise a kid that has gone through as much as Ewen has these past few months.

It still took a long time to get him to sleep. We talked for half an hour then he wiggled around for a long time and flexed his leg and feet muscles in his OCD way, and I rubbed his feet. He went to sleep at 9:50, exactly an hour after I made him get in bed. I hope the antibiotics help his tics too.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Spring Break 2017 Update

4ml Prozac, 500mg Zithromax 3x a week, 1.5 mg melatonin, less than a quarter of Clonidine Ewen is doing well. Right now he is vacuuming and mopping the whole house (all 850 square fee lol) To earn an hour of screen time playing Overwatch. We have had a few hiccups. He got in major trouble in school for hacking into the computer and writing silly things on a class web page. He said he didn't realize he would get a referral and get in so much trouble since he wasn't hurting anyone and would never bully. He also dropped his grades because he was too busy having fun with his friends. So Mike and I had a meeting with his teachers. He now has a 504 plan since he has had lots of absences.  We are paying close attention so that we can make sure he completes his assignments. Last month he was having trouble with tics (mostly huffing) and anxiety and so his pediatrician put his Zithromax up to 500 mg every day for a full week. That completely helped and was amazing to get him back

The Chair of the Pediatric ER Wrote Back!!!!!

Ms. ....... Thank you very much for bringing your son’s case and experience to our attention. First of all, I hope that Owen is still doing much better. I absolutely understand how devastating this could be in terms of a missed opportunity to appropriately diagnose. I have to say that in reading your email and updating my knowledge about the condition, I could see how it may be quite difficult to make a diagnosis accurately in an Emergency Department setting and I could see why things occurred in the manner in which they did. That said, I am very sorry that we let you and your family and your son down in this way. Our Pediatric Emergency Department are staffed by a group of very expert pediatric emergency medicine specialists trained in some of our nation’s leading teaching institutions who I was able to recruit here to ...........  to take care of our community. I know that the fact that we were not able to expeditiously diagnose your son’s condition caused a great deal of an

Depressed Again

4ml prozac, 1/6 Clonidine, probiotics (no more antibiotics until Sunday) 1/2 magnesium Ewen was miserable all day and wouldn't go swimming at his Grandma's house when she picked him up. Tonight going to sleep he had no tics but he said that he was anxious and depressed and wanted to break free from all of this. He was on the verge of crying which is very unusual for him. It broke my heart. We are both tired of the highs and lows but he is the one living it.  And he is so young it's not fair. Mike and I talked about it and maybe we should put the Prozac up again since the tics have gone. We feel so lost with all of this. It was like he was cured for 2 weeks and now he is sick again, even though he is still taking the Zithromax. He has his class trip and soccer tournament coming up in 2 days. I hate that he will be away from home  for 4 days when he isn't in good shape.