How long did prednisolone take to work for your DC?

[Itstheimplication]

DS - nearly Three - has been prescribed three days of this. He has cough variant asthma (they think), has had an on off cough for the last year since feb and seems to get a cough with everything.
recently we had work done so the house is dustier than usual and he already had a cough as he was two weeks after a nasty virus (coughs always linger with him) so it seemed to really exacerbate it.
the doctor prescribed the steroids as she said if the cough was caused by an irritant it would improve significantly on the tablets.
itmight be slightly better but he’s coughed about five times since he went to bed at 7, is still coughing when he’s running and jumping etc, but he also seems to be incredibly
snotty and the cough sounds quite congested now.

I was just wondering how long it worked fOr your DC? He had his first dose yesterday evening, second one this morning, last one is due tomorrow morning. If the cough is caused by the blocked up nose, are steroids likely to make any difference to that?

thanks I’m advance I’m desperate for it to
improve

When mine take it they generally improve within 12-24 hours.

24 hours I would say. We were advised to take in the morning and by the following morning they were much better

It’s been just over 24 hours so I guess I should have seen more of an improvement by now? :(
does it usually clear all symptoms within 24 hours or just a notable improvement

If the cough is now chesty I don't think the steroids will improve it and the cough is there to bring up or move the mucus. This is often the pattern with my DC, the asthma cough first (we usually get wheezing as well) and then it turns into a more snotty / chesty cold

@tiredmumma8696 your username is so apt by the way. That’s really interestinG. This is how we seem to run the near “constant” coughs. He gets a viral infection or cold, the snottiness turns into a slight cough which then triggers his asthma cough. Once that settles he usually still gets a chesty snotty sounding cough afterwards. I’m using saline drops to help but nothing seems to be clearing it at the moment and he doesn’t seem to understand how to cough up the mucus or blow his nose which would be a game changer.

he’s got a referral to respiratory team because the cough has gone on for so long and although we saw some improvement when they added montelukast to his inhalers it never properly went away at night and after exercise, but the wait is up to six months. I’m starting to worry something is really wrong because it seems like we only have a week off now and then and then the cough comes back. And it all started as a result of him having had Covid even though he didn’t get a cough from Covid, it came immediately after.

sorry for the long ramble, I’m very tired and sort of despairing at this point.

it doesn’t help that he started nursery this year in April and literally got felled by every single virus or infection going until about august when it seemed to go from
every other week to every six weeks…

quick update, he barely coughed last night. Thought we were in the clear as he's barely coughed today as well apart from one coughing fit after jumping around, but he's gone to bed and is now having coughing fits again. I just don't understand it. He's swallowing back gunk when he's coughing so I wonder if that's he part that the steroids aren' going to touch and they've just stopped the frequency which was largely from the dust irritant

Just wanted to give you some reassurance that my son follows the same pattern - dry cough at first which triggers the wheeze then it develops into a chesty cough. He sounds far worse on a chesty cough but I’m always relieved as it means we are out of the woods!

As I understand it, the steroid is purely for the wheeze and to help the airways stay open as opposed to narrowing. My son is recovering from a nasty chest infection at the moment. He was on antibiotics for a few days along with his inhaler as a precaution and then I noticed his oxygen levels were dropping. The doctor prescribed dex (alternative steroid to prednisolone) to basically keep him out of a&e but we didn’t need to
use it in the end.

Lying down will also trigger coughing hence why they usually have a bout when they wake up in the morning. Are you able
to monitor his oxygen levels? Is he sucking in around his tummy or in his neck when he breathes? I’d use both those to judge whether he needs more intervention.

@Fleura thank you that was incredibly helpful, I'm pretty new to all this and still have moments where I'm not convinced it is actually asthma. I can't monitor his levels as he screams the place down if I try to put anything on his finger or foot (he's a nightmare if he ends up in hospital with this, gets hysterical) but we've never actually had a problem with his oxygen levels when he's gone in or been at GP, his heart rate gets a bit high though.
I tend to go by how his breathing is, and although he's obviously a bit more breathless when actually coughing, he's steady and not pulling or anything like that. He never actually has a wheeze either but the steroids were prescribed because the cough was so so frequent overnight (escalated due to the dust in our house at the moment I think). That's definitely improved, he does seem to cough when he goes to sleep and first wakes up still or if he's running about and I wasn't really sure whether the steroids should be fixing this completely or whether it would be more of a general improvement but the cough still having to work its way out.

Now it sounds more mucus-y as he's swallowing stuff when he's coughing (he doesn't understand to spit it out) and he's been sick with it once, which actually seemed to help for a bit as it got it up!

I just find it all such a minefield and never know whether I should be worrying more etc or what to expect from the medications.

Touch wood seems to have improved loads. I actUally slept last night as he didn’t cough between 9pm and 5am this is a miracle! He’s still coughing when he first goes to bed, first wakes up and if he jumPs about and gets over excited but apart from that it’s significantly better