IGa deficits, refulx, and URI??????

[Anonymous]

When Carson was in the ER the week before last they drew Iga,IGg and IGm levels. The IGg value was 17 and we were referred to a pediatric diagnostician. He drew the lab again this past week and said if it resulted low also, we could be dealing with an under developed immune system. He also said this could be the cause of all of our troubles. Carson was born at 34 weeks and for 3 weeks prior to his birth, I was in the hospital with pneumonia.

My questions are many……but I will give the main 3.

Could all of the antibiotics I was on while pregnant be part of the cause of the low IGa levels? (kind of makes sense to me but who knows????)

If it is the IGa level, and it is not extremely low at a value of 17, how or will they treat him or do we have to keep suffering with all the infection and GI upset?

If it turns out the 2nd lab is normal, any idea what issues or disorders we are looking at then?

If you have any guidance or answers I would so appreciate them. We are in uncharted territory here and so hoping this is the answer (that sounds bad but at 18 mos you just want someone to figure out why your child is miserable)but are very apprehensive about the future, especially if the labs are not conclusive.

[Anonymous]

one of my children is IgA deficient—and his levels are almost non-existent. i doubt that the antibiotics you were on while pregnant had anything to do with his IgA levels. 8 of my 9 children have one of the main genes for celiac disease—but only 3 actually have celiac disease. for some reason, celiacs have a higher incident of IgA deficiency than the regular population.

ian had alot of ear infections when he was little. he seemed to have a cold all the time during the winter as he got older, so i thought he might have allergies. we had him tested and there were no allergies. it wasn’t until we had him tested for celiac that we discovered he was Iga deficient.

from what i have read, some people have a lot of problems with an IgA deficiency, and some have very little problem with it. after ian got older and quit having ear infections, i’d say he hasn’t really had much trouble with it.

hopefully you aren’t dealing with anything too serious and your son won’t have too many problems with his lowered immune system. he has a lot higher level than my son, and i don’t consider him to have much of a problem with it.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Christine.

When did Ian’s infections begin clear up? We are still on this every 3 week roller coaster with the antibiotics. I am afraid of what all these drugs are doing to him, but I realize without treating the infections things could get worse very fast. He has been on an antibiotic every 3 weeks since the beginning of March and has had pneumonia 2x since April.

[Anonymous]

ian was a small, fussy, and sickly looking baby until he was 2 years old. no one ever mentioned putting tubes in his ears—i don’t know why. i would suggest you ask about getting tubes in your son’s ears.

my twins got tubes in their ears when they were 11 months old, and molly got tubes when she was 8 months old.

how bad are his ear infections when he gets them? does he run a fever, do they drain, or do they just look red when the doctor looks inside? they have discovered in the last several years that alot of ear infections do not need to be treated with antibiotics—-they will clear up on their own even without antibiotics. of course, if they are running a fever, they probably should have antibiotics.

that many antibiotics can be really hard on your system—–and after my bout with MRSA this years i’m not keen on the over-use of antibiotics.

when do you expect to get the other test results back?

[Anonymous]

He has had tubes put in. 2 weeks after tubes we started tonsillitis every 3 weeks. They wont even consider removing his tonsils and he runs a fever and stops eating every time so we have no choice but antibiotics. He is so small now they have have given us weight limit recommendation for the PEG tube.I am just lost. I feel like I am backed in a corner and cant find a way out. If he doesn’t eat he looses weight and they are unwilling to do the tonsillectomy. It looks like the PEG tube is our only choice. They keep saying if we can get him healthy with the PEG he may just grow out of it. From a nursing standpoint I do not want the tube but if its the best thing for him I have no choice. It seems like when he is on the antibiotics he is a different child, happy feels good and eats well. I just feel so bad for him. Its a vicious circle. He gets sick, stops eating, looses weight and his system keeps getting weaker, takes antibiotics and feels good for 4-5 days and it starts all over again. We are running out of doctors. There are no more Ped GI’s within 8 hours of us and his MD’s now are specialists at the University of NC Children’s Hospital. I hate that he may have to have a PEG. He is a very active little boy who likes dirt and water. I know the road well with feeding tubes and those 3 things do not mix well. I feel like my opinion and experience with Carson has no weight with these MD’s. It’s like they have ruled on it and thats the bottom line.

[Anonymous]

why won’t they consider taking his tonsils out? sylvia had huge tonsils and as far as we knew, she had never even had a sore throat. she developed obstructive sleep apnea–which kept her failure to thrive because of the lack of deep sleep—she twice had a feeding tube hanging over her head, but i managed to get weight on her both times and avoid the tube. her ped gi referred her to a ped ENT (i didn’t know there were ped ENTs). she had her tonsils taken out a week after she turned 2. when she went to sleep, the doc said her tonsils were touching and that they were full of debris. she also had to stay in the hospital for two nights with an IV because she was so young and so small. she only weighed 22 lbs at the time.

how much does carson weigh right now?

[Anonymous]

They just keep saying he is to young for a tonsillectomy Everyones suggested age seems to be 3 years old now.. They ran a sleep study on him 2 weeks ago and we are very anxious to hear back from that b/c my husband is a Neuro tech and reads sleep studies. Unfortunately, it was not done at his lab so we have to wait for the actual study record to be archived. As for the tonsills themselves…. Two MD’s have said they are a 3+ out of 5 and need to come out and the current ped ENT said they were not overly large. Makes you wonder where they all went to med school- how hard can it be to size up a kids tonsills?????

Right now he weighs 19lbs 14 oz and I have a feeling that this cut off weight they are going to come up with is going to be 19 lbs. Every time he gets sick he looses about 4-6 oz, which doesn’t sound like much but when you have a kid that won’t eat, there is a lot you have to do to keep it to ONLY 4-6 oz, as I am sure you know.

[Anonymous]

UPDATE!!!!!!!!!

sorry I forgot to put this in the last post.

Carson was approved for ST once a week for six months and will begin next Friday!

YAAAAAAA HOOOOOOOO

We have been fighting for this from 4 months old on

[Anonymous]

dang it, i just accidentally deleted a post!! grrrr. now to shorten what i had been trying to say. sylvia did not get a feeding tube when she had her fundo done because she had been a good eater. after surgery she started to refuse to eat, or she would chew her food and then spit it out. around 6-8 months she had had oral thrush and i had it on my breasts—i just couldn’t seem to get us both treated at the same time.

i asked the family doc if she could have thrush and it not be obvious—he said no. i asked the ped gi the same question, and he said, yes, it could be in her esophagus. since the only way to know for sure is with a scope and we were three hours away, he decided to go ahead and give her diflucan. she started to eat and sleep and gain weight. he also had me quit nursing her and i went to my obgyn and got something that cleared my breasts up. my family doc had given me something for it (without even looking at it) when i told him the meds didn’t work, he said i must have had something different than thrush on my breasts—and still didn’t even look at them.

since carson has been on so many antibiotics it might be a good idea to give him a good course of diflucan to see if it would do him any good.

our ped gi decided that as a precautionary thing, we would put sylvia on a course of diflucan every time she had antibiotic.

i would try and make sure i had exhausted all other options before i let them put a surgically implanted feeding tube. hid weight really doesn’t seem that low for a baby that was 6 weeks premature and has been sick.

one of my twins also had esophageal thrush and we didn’t even had a clue—except that she was having alotof reflux trouble. we actually saw hers on a scope.

i had a MRDA infection bavk in february and i took 3 courses of some pretty harsh antibiotics. i got a raging case of thrush all the way through my system—from one end to the other. i had no idea thrush could be so painful in you mouth because i had had it before. it made my reflux so bad that i spent an entire night sitting up because i was in so much pain.

i know people will say give him probiotics—which is a good idea, too. but if by chance he already has an entrenched oral or especially esophageal thrush, he is going to need a good prescription of diflucan to clear it up.

just thought i would throw these ideas out to you.

glad you were able to get the ST.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Christine. We have done a huge round of Diflucan but it is worth the time to do it with every antibiotic b/c I sure don’t want him to have it again!

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