My Daughter Keeps Getting Sick. We Can't Figure It Out!

My thought was the same as those below - allergies. The allergies don't cause the fever but the congestion makes her more susceptible to illnesses because viruses/bacteria get trapped in the nose instead of cleared.

There is a simple blood test for the 26 (I'm pretty sure it's 26, it might be 21) most common allergens (dairy, nuts, etc), and then there's a more involved skin prick test, which provides more detailed results. Please ask about those tests.

In the meantime, start keeping a journal (I feel like this is my stock answer on here!) of food and liquids consumed.

Be specific. Don't write "snack". Write "handful of red grapes, 1 piece of string cheese and a strawberry kiwi Capri Sun". It's easiest to just use a legal pad or notebook, one page per day. On half the page, write the food and drinks for the day. One the other half, write the symptoms. Do this for at least two weeks. Also note the brand of multivitamin that you give her.

You'll have to ask grandma to be on board with this, of course. And if she buys a school lunch, you'll have to get a description of what she ate at school.

You may notice a pattern. Oh, every time she drinks milk, or whenever she has strawberry jam, or when she plays outside in the grass, she coughs and is sick that evening. Or an allergist may notice something, and at the very least, any allergist or physician who's trying to figure this out will appreciate a journal or log of food and activities.

By the say, when you say sore throat, do you mean a red, irritated, inflamed throat that a doctor could see upon examination, or do you mean that she says her throat is sore, and there's nothing to see? I'm not implying that she's making it up, but there's a difference between feeling an irritated throat and actually having a throat that's red, with spots, etc. She might be feeling an excessively dry throat, or something along those lines.

Only thing that occurs to me is allergies.

Had the pediatrician suggested allergy testing?

My son hardly ever got sick even though pre-school...but come kindergarten he just couldn't get over cold after cold that triggered asthma.

Finally we had him allergy tested and he is VERY highly allergic to dust mites. We have no carpets in our home and I wash sheets weekly. So until he started kinder where they spent a large amount of time sitting on the reading rug that had been on that room for untold number of years that his allergies were triggered. Once we found his trigger the cold/upper respiratory infections stopped as did the asthma.

Find out what she is allergic to...skin testing isn't that bad...or they can do blood testing.

Good luck!!

Ditto... Retta

If I or my daughter miss our daily allergy pill ( Costco version of 24hr Zyrtec) within a few days we are at the Dr. with sinus infection, sure throat, elc.

Ever since we started the daily allergy pill, neither one of us has been to the Dr. due to sinus, sore throat, congestion.

Food for thought!!!

I hope you figure it out. Best wishes

My daughter missed over 40 days of school in 3rd grade. She had chronic sinusitis. We went to an allergist and had the prick test on her back...she didn't have allergies. Then the doctor had her blood tested for an immune diffeciency although she said she would be very surprised if anything abnormal showed. Kids with immune issues typically have skin infections and pneumonia which my daughter never had. Her blood work came back a little funky and they ended up giving her another dose of the pneumococcal vaccine. She is so much better than she was. She still missed about 20 days of school last year (6th grade) though. She seems to catch everything.

I also think allergies but I do think she is also growing her adult immune system.

Everywhere she goes she is being exposed to new germs and reacting to them. As she reacts, gets sick, has allergies, etc...she is building her system so that she can fight of diseases. It's a much needed thing for kids to go through.

Since she's been sick, seems like you're saying all along her childhood that it might have some allergies with it but her getting sick when she goes somewhere is good, very very good.

Kids who go to childcare have better attendance records in kindergarten because they've already built up immunity to many childhood things. If a child is at home they have a much more limited exposure pool. This year she will likely miss a couple of days per month home with illnesses as she develops her systems.

Kids who don't go through this as a child don't have much of an immune system when they become adults and there is a high correlation between not being sick enough as a kid and MS and some other diseases like that. The theory is they were too clean and too sequestered and didn't get exposed to germs and didn't build the sheath on the cells of their body. Something similar to that if that isn't exact.

So, overall I think she will spend a lot of time being sick BUT she should also have some immunity built up and should not have been so sick all the time so far.

All three of my kids spent ages 3,4 and 5 sick CONSTANTLY it seemed. We are healthy eaters with healthy lifestyles, but every time they went ANYWHERE, they got the sniffles, cough, fevers...I just figured it was all the germs in all the places, and then close quarters at home to swap germs..I never medicated unless they were too miserable to sleep then I'd give over the counter kid stuff.

Now they're 9, 7 and 6 and things have died down but my oldest is sniffly a lot so we realized she does have allergies. So far untreated, she's just used to it.

Yep, first thought was allergies.

Allergies are common.
Has she been home until kindergarten?

My sister and I were home until kindergarten and then we got sick with everything that came through for about 2 years before things settled down to a cold or two per year.

When our son started day care at 3 months old - he got sick with everything that came through for about 2 years before things settled down - and things settled down a whole lot when his tonsils and adenoids were removed when he turned 4 yrs old.

My personal theory is it takes about 2 years of exposure to public germs to train up an immune system.

A low grade fever (< 101 ) is annoying but usually not a problem.
If she's uncomfortable use Tylenol and Motrin and alternate them to control it.
For sore throat, have her gargle with salt water, rinse her nose out with salt water using a neti pot (our son could do it at 4 yrs old) and chicken soup and chamomile tea with lemon and honey in it is very soothing on a sore throat.

I do a lot of education around immune system support, and while I agree that allergies COULD be a factor, so could a depressed immune system. And allergies are a form of auto-immune response to something that should be harmless but just isn't in some people.

I agree that we do too much sanitizing in many ways, and that kids just have to get dirty now and then. We're learning a lot about the hazards of antibacterial soaps and so on, not just the ingredients' harmful effect on the skin but also the hazards of killing off all the lesser bacteria and letting the super-bugs flourish. However, I have to disagree vehemently with Gamma about MS coming from insufficient exposure to diseases! WHAT? There is far more evidence and research showing that epigenetic changes alter cell function by switching off beneficial genes, causing inflammation or auto-immune responses or both. No scientists that I know of are saying to keep your kids sick so they don't get MS! I'd like to see any clinical study that says there's a relationship - please do forward it to me if you've seen anything like that from a reputable, neutral source.

I think learning more about epigenetics could help your daughter a lot. You just can't do enough through diet alone - she's not getting what she needs through fruits and veggies, and a multivitamin won't do much either. Ask the pediatrician about that - most don't recommend them anymore especially because they carry warning labels and don't have enough in them to make a huge difference. She needs much more than that - we all do.

Keep us posted!

We went through something very similar last winter. But, it was me and the kids! It turns out we had gotten one of those fancy air purifiers (to help keep us healthy) that had the black light to do an extra layer of purifying. Well, the black light put out particles into the air that made our lungs react. They were the precursors the scientists were dealing with when they developing the atomic bomb! Anyway, once we figured it out, we turned off the machine, and we were better in a 3 days! The whole family had been on antibiotics over and over for 4 months. One week, we were at the dr office 3 times for each kid!

Please look into allergies. If you need to have an air quality test done, please do. The kids haven't gotten sick and needed antibiotics again since.

Did she attend childcare/preschool? A lot of kids get sick in Kindergarten if they didn't because they're exposed to a lot of new germs. My daughter hasnt had to miss any days of school for being sick because she caught it all when she was littler.

My daughter did the same thing through kindergarten. She was sick frequently. She had never been in daycare and I thought it was her exposure to a different environment. It was bad enough at the end of the year her doc was suggesting allergy testing. She was home a week or two that summer and symptoms completely disappeared. I believe it was probably a combination of things. We decided to homeschool and travel with my husband in our business. I can count on 1 hand the number of times she's been to the doctor besides yearly checks and she's 16 now. My daughter stays on a probiotic. I read when I was doing research that a healthy immune system is directly related to a healthy gut.

I agree with keeping a journal of what she's eating. I'm betting its environmental. I would have her do an evening salt water gargle and nose rinse. The closer she can do it toward bedtime the better.

Hope she's better soon and you figure it out.

Blessings!
L.

I know some people suggest an allergist, I agree. BUT I would also consider Candidiasis (an over abundance of yeast) .. which if for example tested for fruits, she may not come up allergic, however, yeast LOVE fruit and it makes it grow.. as do things like peanut butter, fermented foods, etc.. yeast can show up in children as thrush, painful itchy diaper rash...
it can almost manifest itself with a sore throat that won't go away.. low grade fever and more..
Some people think that yeast over-growth is just for the adult females.. NOT true, anyone can have it. it begins in our guts... even too much milk (for which there is milk sugar, not to mention that which they give the animal to drink) can trigger a yeast infection..
Antibiotics can make yeast worst too.. so you are right to want to try and stay away from those..
if all else fails, get her checked for yeast.. if your general practitioner can't do it or won't.. you may have to try and alternative doctor..
there are a lot of articles on the net about yeast..

good luck