When people talk about PANS and Lyme recovery, I’m frustrated that it’s always in terms of symptoms. For me, it’s never about the symptoms—it’s about coming back from the dead and regaining the parts of me that were lost.
When PANS makes my immune system attack my brain, the physical effects (similar to a brain injury) give me a mental sense of losing who I am and even of being disconnected from reality. Continue reading “Not About Symptoms: The Truth on PANS/Lyme Recovery”
“Do I have to take my shoes off?”
I asked my psychiatrist in a trembling voice as I stared at the floor, too ashamed to make eye contact.
My hands were shaking as I reached for my shoestrings, because I already knew the answer, and I knew what would happen the moment my doctor saw the double-digit number on the scale… Continue reading “Attacked, Trapped, Tormented: My War with PANS & Anorexia”
I’ll never forget the day I first set foot in a Lyme clinic, as I watched other patients with pale, exhausted faces roll into the waiting room in wheelchairs. I’d just finished another semester of college and a ten-mile run that weekend. I remember thinking, I can’t possibly be sick enough to have Lyme Disease. What am I doing here?
Continue reading “I Wasn’t “Sick Enough” to Have Lyme. Then 2017 Exposed a Shocking Truth…”
This weekend, I’ve defied all odds; I’ve done what never should’ve been possible…
I graduated from college, Summa Cum Laude… While in a long-standing battle with PANS and Lyme Disease!
When I was first diagnosed, it felt like my life was a tragedy, and PANS was the ending. I was sure that it had completely ruined me, and pursuing my dreams seemed inconceivable…
Continue reading “I Graduated College with PANS, Lyme, and…. Highest Honors!”
This semester, I wasn’t at school until October… Though I’d never missed a single day of sitting in the classroom.
After returning home from my summer internship in August, where I’d felt almost 100%, I noticed symptoms creeping back in. At first, I waited it out to see if they would pass, but I kept getting worse and worse, slipping farther and farther into a tormented mind that I no longer recognized. Continue reading “I Did 8 Weeks of IV Steroids for PANS. Here’s What Happened…”
They say that “school refusal,” or a deterioration in school performance, is a hallmark symptom of PANS/PANDAS.
Continue reading “Do These 7 Symptoms Make College Impossible?”
As I hurried off to class the other week, suddenly, I knew things were awry: it was that strange and all-too-familiar feeling in my head that foretells a drop attack.
Lately, with each day that’s gone by, I’ve slipped farther and farther into the abyss of my inflamed brain. I’m in a bona fide PANS relapse—there’s no denying it now.
As it turns out, I’ve had too much faith in my Lyme/co-infections antibiotic protocol. Continue reading “Is This a Nightmare Come True?”
For the last eleven years of my life, I’ve battled a debilitating yet misunderstood autoimmune disease called PANS. It’s a disorder where an infection or an environmental trigger confuses your immune system into attacking your brain. This leads to all sorts of problems like OCD, anxiety, depression, tics, involuntary movements, cognitive problems, and many more horrible things. It affects at least 1 in 200 people, but you’ve probably never heard of it. Many doctors haven’t, either.
Since the first day I became ill, shame was a mainstay in my life with PANS… Shame about irrational fears that no one understood. Shame that I felt no control over my mind or body. Shame that I couldn’t do what I once could. Shame that I lashed out at my parents and said things I never wanted. Shame that I was spending more time with doctors than friends. Shame that I’d become a different person that I hated.
Continue reading “It Isn’t You: Defying the Shame of My Chronic Illness”
