Why Downs Syndrome leaves you with a low immune system

Why Downs Syndrome leaves you with a low immune system

Well after yesterday’s year update its tuff to know where to start – I have so much I want to tell you….which subject to choose??? Ok let’s go for a few things I mentioned in yesterday’s blog. 

Whooping Cough – did you know that babies don’t always have the “whoop” with whooping cough?? Lani didn’t which is why it took so long for them to diagnose it. My gut instinct kept on telling me to take her to the doctors and every time they came up with a different reason for her coughing, I filmed her on my phone having a coughing fit and took that in to show a doctor and she said straight away what it was (this is such a good tip for anyone who has baby who as soon as they get to the doctors won’t show the symptoms your telling the doctor about). Did you know Doctors can’t solve Whooping Cough they can only give you antibiotics to stop it spreading. Like I said yesterday Lani has had all of her injections so you would imagine she would be covered for all of these elements, this is not the case with Lani as she has such a low immune system she could catch anything she comes into contact with, that worries me a bit or should I say it makes me more aware that Lanis symptoms could be more serious than any doctor may initially think.

Lanis coughing went on for what seemed like forever, she got a lot worse at night and so I slept in with her on the floor as she could on bad nights have maybe only 10 minutes between coughing fits. We brought a humidifier for her room which to be honest I am not sure it helped, just cost a lot and made a lot of noise, but we will as parents try everything to help our little ones. 

At about 2 months in to the cough lanis breathing changed and so we took her to the Doctors again (they must have been fed up past the back teeth with seeing us in the surgery) they confirmed she had Croup so now we were dealing with Whooping Cough, Croup and sleep deprivation…OMG looking back how did we cope with that?? 

The coughing slowly stopped and the Croup cleared up and for a while there we were back to wellness, not for long though as Lani came down with a very bad case of tonsillitis. How do you know if a baby’s got tonsillitis I hear you ask?? Well I had no clue what was wrong with her but that morning she didn’t want to wake up and when I was dressing her she was sleepy and floppy (usually getting dressed time is a wriggly struggle – lani’s middle name should have been “Houdini” lol). She had a slight shakiness to her which I could not decide if she was shaking or not but she was as white as a sheet and uninterested in breakfast, so I decided to call up the Doctors and get them to check her over. When I gave the Doctor the symptoms over the phone he asked me to bring her straight into surgery and he would see her immediately, true to his word as soon as we arrived we were taken straight in. He checked her and decided it was tonsillitis, she had more antibiotics and came home for a  cuddles and TV day. 

That night Lani was put up to bed and I didn’t check her until we went up a bit later, I looked into her cot and there was blood on the sheet at the head end, I picked her up even though she was fast asleep and checked her, there was no obvious cuts on her so I called 111 and spoke to a paramedic who was suggesting she may have cut her mouth with sharp nails, nope I keep her nails short so it wasn’t that, he said he had never heard of a little baby’s tonsils bursting so he wanted a doctor to call us. The 111 service was brilliant and as promised a Doctor called us with in minutes and he said it’s very rare for them to burst at her age but no doubt that was what had happened. Poor Lani she was very poorly, we had lots of time at home for her to recover.  

So my title today was “why does Downs Syndrome leave you with a low immune system?” if your interested you will have to Google it yourself as I have just spent 5 minutes reading a few sites and firstly it’s all very “doctor speak” nothing in layman’s terms so I don’t really understand it and secondly I read how people with DS are more likely to get Leukaemia because of their low immune system. I just can’t handle reading about that as I will just worry and probably never sleep again so I quit looking that subject, self-preservation. 

What I do know and I am happy to think about is how I can help to improve her immune system, we give Lani multi vitamins. No let me rephrase that – we “try” to give Lani multi vitamins!! They come in drop form and she hates them, when I put it on her dinner she won’t eat it so over all 3 meals of the day I put just a few drops in to try and dilute it so she does not notice which works most of the time. When she is 3 she will be allowed to have chewy ones which are like sweets, I think that will help. Also we are going to be asking our consultant at hospital to refer us to a dietician who may help us also. The other thing we do is give lani an armpit massage as I have been told massaging this area stimulates the immune system – we are happy to give anything a go and Lani likes me massaging her.

Diary

Fridays are always my day off so I will where possible never arrange any baby clubs ect, so today we did a bit of shopping and just pottered around our house. I am teaching Lani numbers so we do lots of counting at every opportunity and I am also potty training Lani (I will post on this subject soon), life even on a day off is busy. Also today we as a family are waiting for news of a new baby about to join us, this will mean that Lani is no longer the baby of the family – happy face.