continuously unwell

[Mered12]

My daughter is 14 months old, started nursery in September and has basically been unwell since. I know this is common as my son went and he was unwell a lot too. But she was in hospital in October for 10 days with adenovirus and viral pneumonia, but since she’s been well for a week then back unwell back and forth the doctors and had about 5 different antibiotics since being in hospital.
She seen the doctor just before Christmas and she thought she still had crackles on her chest and sent her for a chest xray and prescribed more antibiotics, however she was being sick and couldn’t keep these down so we were sent to paediatrics in the hospital who completely contradicted the GP and said her chest was clear don’t take the antibiotics she has a viral infection. Last week I seen the GP (a different one) for a follow up to check her weight (as she’s been losing/maintaining from all the illness’s) and he said there’s still crackles on her chest and she didn’t take the antibiotics it hasn’t cleared we need to do something else and the chest xray shows that there is an infection there. She’s been on the antibiotics a week is still unwell and now I’ve read an article about a baby who died in their sleep who had a similar couple of months prior and died of pneumonia but didn’t have any symptoms.
It has completely sent me into a spiral and I’m not sure what to do! How can I make her better, has anyone had anything similar with their little ones and their chests being bad for months? Is there anything else I should ask the doctor to check?

Any advice appreciated!

As a general principle, in this situation if you think the child is failing to get better from illness (particularly coupled to no weight gain/weight loss), if you present back to the GP they are quite likely to refer you to a hospital based service - either because they share your intuition that something worrying is going on, or because they don't think so but haven't been able to reach a conclusion you can find reassuring (bearing mind GPs have much less access to tests, or even just time for a through consultation).

Unfortunately neither examination or X rays reliably detect the difference between bacterial Vs viral infections, so it's possible the winter illness were either or both. It's definitely not uncommon for otherwise entirely healthy 14 month olds to have a really rubbish winter of one illness after the other - a very small fraction with this history might turn out to have abnormalities of the chest or immune system, depending on other aspects of the history and tests.