Hello,
I am so totally confused now. Basically my 16mth old always sounds rattly. You hold him and you can feel it in his chest. You feel like saying"just clear your throat"! and when he does cough, it clears for a while. He has always been like this. He did experience vomitting for a while and we were given reflux drugs which did the trick. He still however wakes loads at night and sound rattly, will often cough, brought on by crying, and his voice sounds very hoarse. We've been trying Losec, assuming it was oesophagitis reflux or laryngitis relflux (whatever it's called!), but there's been no change. Now the consultant wants us to trial a course of "steroids", thinking it could be under the umbrella of asthma (he has also developed some excema on his back). He said to stop reflux drugs, so we can see if the steroids alone do anything. He said if they don't work, then it's more likely to be reflux. If they do work, it's clearly and allergic / asthma type problem.

Does any of this make sense to any of you?

If he was wheezing without the hoarseness, I might feel more convinced, but he's more rattly than wheezy.
Help!
Love Beth
x

Sam is very rattly also. We tried to go the allery/asthma route as well, but it was no use. We finally did a modified barium swallow (swallow study) to see what was going on. We found out that he was pooling his liquids/saliva/food in his throat in the phyrangal (sp??) pockets. Not sure how to describe them - there are small folds in the throat that create these pockets that stuff can settle into.

Whan Sam would breathe it would sound like it was in his chest, but it never was. His chest x-rays (all 12 of them) came back clean as a whistle. We started to feed him doing double spoons (one full spoon, one empty spoon) to elicite a second swallow so he would clear that gunk out of his throat. This worked for a long time, but not anymore. Now I just cough (fake cough) and say oh bad cough and he will mimic me ( Sam is also 16 months old). Other wise I growl at him and me mimics that and that clears out the rattly stuff.

We tried the inhaler for asthma and it didn't do any good - rattly as ever so I stopped using it and it is the same. I hope you get some more suggestions.