What to Track Every Day When Your Child Has PANDAS
Most PANDAS parents know they should be tracking. The problem is knowing what to track, how often, and in what format a specialist can actually use. This guide breaks it down to the essentials.
Track Every Day — Including the Calm Ones
The single most common mistake in PANDAS tracking is logging only on bad days. A specialist cannot interpret a flare without a baseline. The goal is to build a time series — daily entries including the unremarkable ones. Calm days are the reference point that gives every other entry meaning.
The Core Symptom Categories to Log Daily
Rate each symptom on a 0–10 scale. Key categories: OCD behaviors and intrusive thoughts, separation anxiety and fear of harm, emotional lability and meltdowns, motor and vocal tics, sensory sensitivities, sleep disruption, cognitive and academic regression, urinary urgency and frequency, food restriction, and physical complaints during flares.
Log Strep Exposure and Other Triggers
Log confirmed strep diagnoses in household members and close contacts, rapid strep test results, other illnesses, school absences, stressful events, and sleep disruptions. The temporal relationship between strep exposure and symptom onset is central to a PANDAS diagnosis.
Medications and Treatments
Log every medication change with start date and dose — prophylactic antibiotics, treatment courses, anti-inflammatories, IVIG, psychiatric medications. The treatment log enables specialists to evaluate what worked and when.
What to Do Before an Appointment
Two days before every specialist visit, generate a report from your tracking data — symptom timeline, exposure events, treatment history. Hand it to the specialist at the start of the appointment.