The nurse from Caden's doctor office called yesterday to inform me that it's definitive, Cade is not allergic to cats! Yeah, Miles gets to stay!! (Sorry daddy.) The nurse mentioned that Dr. Omar would be following up regarding the next step later that afternoon.
Finally about 6 p.m. last night I received his phone call and he was very concerned about making sure that we got to the bottom of this cough. A true blessing that all signs of infection and bacteria were clear, but it still left unanswered questions. After much discussion about the flux of intensity in Caden's cough (it's now occurring every 15-20 min instead of ever 4-7 min) and his signs of irritation (low grade fever and itchy, watering eyes), Dr. Omar was certain that the inflammation was in regards to some other sort of allergy.
So, we're temporarily diagnosing it as an allergic cough, and have put him on a steroid called Prednisolone which should impact the cough. If we see a difference in the next week, then we'll go forward with meeting with an allergist here to do skin testing to determine the initiator. And, if we do not see any difference, then Dr. Omar will most likely send us back to U of I and demand a full examination. He said in that case, they'll do a scope of his airways, but the likelihood of needing to go to those extremes was low.
I did question his thoughts on asthma, and if we would see any connected behaviors to allergies and his response was "absolutely." He said that at this time, he was refraining from using the term asthmatic cough because that implies that a cough has been in existence for more than 6 months. We've been dealing with this since October, so we've only reached the 4 month mark!
All in all, we are still experimenting and waiting, but Dr. Omar is 110% dedicated to us, and that is a great feeling. Look for another update on Caden next Tuesday after our next discussion with the doc. Thanks again to all of you for following up on us!
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