toddler coughing

[tramag]

my 5 year old daugher, has a consistant cough, that gets worse when she lies down at night and when she gets up in the morning.. she was a very sick child when she was 2 and all upper resp. ending in the hospital after a year and a half of antibiotic and hospitalization, with overwhelming resp bacterial inf. or menenjitis at that point.. almost death.. she was also born with mecomium... and 2 weeks early
   she gets sick easily, and it always is bad.. but her cough has lasted for months and months.. once in a while we get a day or two break, but it is rare.. i am very worried about her and the coughing has kept her from sleep and i am afraid it is going to affect her education...she has circles under her eyes that look like ours...from lack of sleep.
  we have had her tested for all allergies and she has none.. she has no fever and the drs say it is nothing to worry about, and we use chertussin, which is not helping anymore at all! at least it would help for an hour or so.. but not anymore..it is a million times worse when she is sick with a cold.. but this coughing is when she has no cold too.. and again worse at night...it is constantly worsening.. we have not had a chest x-ray--but a sinus scan when she was 2--  i am at a loss as what to do and what is going on!!!!!! so tired.. we are all so tired!

[trying43]

On the nose spray, if you use over the counter you are really only supposed to give it for 3 to 5 days at a time(per my good doctor lol) unless it is a plain saline one. As far a a prescription one, flonase worked great on my son.  Have the drs. suggested any breathing treatments with either albuterol or xeopenex?  At least you could try them to help rule out asthma.(if they work you would know its that, albuterol is the cheaper of the two BTW)
I has a horrible allergy to pine trees when I was young and I actually had sinus surgery in my teens because they stayed so inflamed all the time.(I dont recommend this sugery at all, recovery from it is horrible and it doesnt last, 2 years max my husband had it too and his lasted a year) Eventially I out grew my allergy.  Can you think of anything in your house that might be bothering her?  My neice is allegic to those plug in air freshners, makes her cough a lot if there is one plugged in.  Any pets around?  Pet dander is sometimes hard on kids.  My nephew is highly allergic to that, kills his sinuses.  Any evergreen trees around?  My brother is allergic to all evergreens!
The doctors in our area SUCK!!!  lol We have to go 2 hours away to find anyone worth a flip.  I was even undiagnosed for 5 years(drs here said I was just depressed) until I finally went to a research hospital and they figured out I had seizures and an autoimmune disease.  Are there any diagnostic clinics or childrens hospitals in your area?  Heck take her there!  
It just makes you feel so helpless when you babies are sick and you cant get anyone to listen.  I hope they get something figured out soon. I have a friend who is a nurse practicioner, I will ask her if she has any ideas too and if so I will post what she says. Good luck to ya'll.(yes im a Texan, lol dont hold that against me)

[tramag]

ha, funny! we have been through all of those routes! the ent dr,-- did it,-- the dr was an *** and we quickly went on our way, we went to an allergist, tested but nothing.. we went to an infectious desease dr.. the one thing they did find out was that, she is not keeping the streptococal phenom. immunization in her body.. even after she had an adult --booster one-- there are no antibodies in her blood for that... and we cannot give her another one for at least another year..
    she is on the nose spray--over the counter AYR jell. because she started getting wicked nose bleeds... we were doing it twice a day, and now i am thinking it best to do it once.. and i really dont think it is good to do every day?????
    yesterday was the last of her z pack and her coughing has gotten a bit better, i actually did not give her the zurteck yesterday and she had no coughing spasm, until early morning...
     tonsils are fine and ears look ok.. but she had a wicked inflames sinus cavity and pollups in her eye lids, consistant with allergies, said the dr...
     but i totally agree with you.. any fluid behind the ears is option to become infected fluid and cause bacteria somewhere!
     still at a total loss! the dr offered to get me back to the allergist or one we have not gone to yet, a pulminary specialist?
     thank you so much for helping -- it is good to know that there are others going through this..!

[trying43]

I thought of something else.  Have they checked her ears?  My oldest son would have perfectly clear lungs but had a lot of fluid behind his ears(some drs think its ok to have fluid back there as long as its not infected but hello, if its causing problems?!)  that would cause him to cough.(weird I know but ears can do that it was worse when he would lay down) He never complained of ear pain either.  They put him on a prescription nose spray and an antibiotic and it cleared him up.  It was a temporary fix but at least we identified the problem.  I had to see 4 different doctors, yes 4, before they figured it out. Later we had his tonsils removed(they werent infected but the doctor also said his tonsils were huge and that helped contribute to the problem) and it helped the fluid to completly drain.     If the doctor your seeing doesnt help, see another, then another whatever you got to do, until they figure it out.  See an ear nose and throat dr.  They specialize and are a lot more thorough.  Also that cherritusin stuff is junk it never worked on either of my kids.  The ear nose throat guy is the one who told me to use the delsum and over the counter nosespray(only use the nosespray for 3 days and 1 spray in each nostril once daiy before bed).  If the meds they have given you arent working I would stop giving them and try the simply stuff.  Also put a cool mist humidifier in there as well.  Sorry this is so rambly(pregnancy brain here), just trying to get all the info in there, lol. Good luck.

[tramag]

thank you so much for your helpful answers...
as i talk to more and more parents and looked up toddlers coughing while lying down on google, there are TONS of kids that are going through this too!!! and nobody knows the reason behind it.. they are the exact same symptoms with no concrete answers, and no meds are helping these children!
    my friend who is a 2nd grade teacher, said that in her school,classroom.. there is not ONE child that DOES NOT have an illness, they are all on meds--- for something with a name, and this includes her son.. as she has done research, she has been finding, that all of this is leading back to the children and their shots.. and the multitude of them, barely tested, and bunched together in needles and sequence,  that are required to be given to these kids as well as  the things that are put into the immunizations now..
    she also said that we have almost tripled the number of immunizations that we are requiring our children to take, than when we were younger..
    i was not one to ever believe in this, because my nephew has autism and his parents blame his shots.. and i could never believe that this could happen.. but every day and more and more that i read....i am becoming a person of caution..! i cannot continue to see my children go through this..
    today i spoke with my daughters friends mom, and she told me that she too has had the exact same experience, and finally, after all the antibiotics and cough meds, they put her on asthma med... it didnt get much better, so they upped it and upped it and upped it and finally she was on more asthma med then her mom who has  bronchitis. so she took her off of it.. she did ok for the summer and now that the winter is kicking up it is back to norm...bad, bad, bad!! like so many other children that i have read about, she coughs so much she throws up.. and pulls muscles in her stomach.
    so my question is, if my childs lungs SOUND clear and the dr says there is nothing wrong, and she is sickly and coughing all of the time and being perscribed tons of meds...  how do i say enough is enough?? because i know they are trying, to help so,  how do i go further on, to help her when there are no answers? just un-presented symptoms?
     i feel like we are loosing control of our childrens health, and there are too many examples of this to not open our eyes,,,,and say WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!

[trying43]

Try delsum for now and see what that does, shes 5 so 1/2 a tsp will work, and you can only take it every 12 hours becausre it is a long acting cough medicine and see if it will stop it and help her rest. (if it doesnt stop the cough you can look at reflux)  My son had a chronic cough and after xrays and all kinds of test nothing was found.(through the pedi) We finally had him admitted into the hospital and he actually had pneumonia.  He had no other symptoms but the cough.(this went on for 5 months until we found out)  They put him on iv antibiotics and sent some home and he has been fine ever since.  Good luck.

[poobear221]

• iThink she is getting the  : Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)