Possible asthma and GORD?: Hi there, I... - Asthma Community ...

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Possible asthma and GORD?

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Hi there, I'm new here, just wondering if anyone has experienced anything remotely similar with their children. Apologies first of all as this will be a long post...

My daughter is almost 4 and has had a pretty busy little life since the age of 1 when she started getting nighttime coughs. We had many visits to GP, we had dished out to us lots of antibiotics, a tentative diagnosis of childhood asthma, blue Salbutamol inhaler and eventually the brown Clenil one, initially to give her 1 puff of that twice a day. The coughs didn't get much better, she was now up to 3 puffs of clenil twice a day, and on montelukast, and the occasional dose of prednisolone... We were just plodding along, and then one day aged 2 and a half she woke up with a very strange set of symptoms, her left eyelid looked droopy and left pupil was the size of a pinprick compared to the normally sized right one. A full body MRI was done and they found a left sided congenital diaphragmatic hernia, and a pulmonary sequestration (cystic lung lesion).

Totally shocked at the diagnosis but thinking perhaps we'd found the source of all the coughing, off we went to Yorkhill in April for the CDH repair and removal of the cyst. She recovered really well and we had a great summer, she's just to get yearly reviews now as the surgery was uncomplicated, but for some reason come late August this year she started with the night time cough again and this time it was actually worse, she was coughing over and over all night until she vomited. Nothing seemed to work, we have a humidifier in her room, raised the head of the bed, sat her in bathroom with hot shower running, even gave her 10 puffs of Salbutamol and nothing helped, We took her to A&E in the end as she really wasn't breathing that well at all, nurse did her obs and her heart rate was 150, oxygen saturations 91-94%, she was continuing with coughing attacks coupled with vomiting even while we waited in A&E. They put her on the nebuliser for 15 mins and unsurprisingly her saturations went up to 100%. She seemed slightly better and we were discharged home with a referral to a paediatric respiratory consultant. The cough hasn't gone away since it began in August so we're onto 3 months now, and when she had her flu jab last month she ended up really bad again.

Anyway we've had her consultant appointment now and he was very thorough, sent her for chest xray there and then and finally decided that from the story we told him he said it sounds like it could be asthma AND gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (apparently the 2 can go hand in hand). We've been given Gaviscon advance and Omeprazole 20mg dispersible tablets (nightmare to give an almost 4 year old).

So my question is have any of your kids been diagnosed with both asthma and GORD? And have you had any luck with omeprazole? We were advised to stop the montelukast about 6 months ago as we weren't seeing any improvement with it so we're just continuing with the 3 puffs of Clenil and salbutamol as required. I just don't think any of the asthma meds are working and it really has me doubting if she even has asthma at all and if we're constantly searching for an answer when there just isn't one.

It's so frustrating!! Ok so I've droned on for far too long now, you're probably all completely bored, sorry. Hoping someone can relate.

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