I know I said I’d start a series on the different treatments I’ve tried, but I’m pausing to tell you why I haven’t been able to post in several weeks…

I caught some terrible virus and have been having symptoms again.  As a result, I got behind in school, so I’ve had to use all my time to get on top of things again.

As you know, when someone with PANDAS gets sick, it never just means sitting in bed and sipping on chicken soup for a few days. In the past, getting sick could literally make me lose my mind. For example, what should have been a mild case of mono during my freshman year of college turned my immune system against my brain, leaving me suicidal, anorexic, and unable to walk.

So you can imagine my fear when I woke up a couple weeks ago with my whole body in pain and a pounding headache. I was so weak that I could barely sit up. Was this the beginning of the end, all over again?

While I didn’t go crazy, I’ve certainly had a rough time as a result of this most recent illness. For a week, I had a ten-second attention span, making it take four times as long to get any of my homework done. I suddenly got it into my head that I needed to start restricting again, and I’ve lost a few pounds. When I was well enough to go back to class, I continually wrote letters out of order when taking notes and struggled to figure out how to fix my spelling errors. Things were making me cry for no reason. One night, I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid that if I did, my heart might stop and then I’d die.

In the midst of this, I had a dream that I was walking on a road with a friend when out of nowhere, I dropped into a mud sinkhole and became submerged up to my shoulders. My friend had stepped in the same place and not fallen in, but what should have been a puddle nearly drowned me.

“This is what happens when I get sick,” I explained. “I need you to pull me out.”

Just as she reached out her arm, I woke up, my heart racing.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the dream, because it’s true for pretty much everyone with PANS. During times of remission, we walk around the world just like everyone else, minding our own business, but then, when the wrong virus or infection comes along, we’re swallowed up by the ground beneath our feet. Most people can emerge from a cold with nothing but a runny nose that lasts a few days, while the same virus could literally drive someone with PANS into insanity. And the worst part is that when you’re busy living your life, you know that any of your steps could be the one that sucks you into the ground.

But thankfully, this time, my friend Prednisone once again pulled me out, and now I’m not having symptoms anymore. I believe there’s a reason why, in my dream, the mud only went up to my shoulders instead of totally burying me—nowadays, my flares never completely take away who I am in the way they used to. As bad as this latest one sounds, it’s nothing compared to how my flares used to be. So while it’s been discouraging to have had a recurrence of symptoms, I’m reminding myself that the mud was unable to swallow me up to my head like it once did.

So readers, I’m fine now, and I’ve finally gotten caught up with school. Next week, I’ll actually be starting my series on treatments, beginning with a post on antibiotics, so stay tuned!