My 14yo daughter has been getting increasingly affected by fatigue, depression, bad headaches, anxiety, dizziness on standing. She was diagnosed with bipolar II this spring.
We have tried antidepressants and mood stabilizers, but nothing seems to help her for very long. She is up/down - some days she feels ok - mostly she feels exhausted, depressed and cannot handle any stress.
She was doing much better while taking a super vitamin/mineral supplement called EMPower Plus - more stable, but still fatigued and dizzy.
Three weeks ago she had a very painful neck - I took her to chiropractor, since she couldn't turn it w/o severe pain.
Then her brother came down w/strep, she was tested and had it too. So she went on amoxicillan for a week.
While on the antibiotics, she had an amazing week! Even when tired, she was able to go to school, canoeing etc.
Two days after antibiotics ended, she crashed again.
Is this a typical Lyme pattern for neurolyme in children? If antibiotics were helping her, would it be so dramatic and stop/start so suddenly?
thanks, misty
Posted by jkmom (Member # 14004) on :
Before we knew my daughter had Lyme, she was diagnosed with strep throat.
She had not been complaining about her throat but had not been feeling well. I wondered if she was faking it because she didn't have much of a fever or any specific symptoms.
The doctor diagnosed her with strep because her sister had strep, but did not test her. He gave her antibiotics and she improved.
Then, she kept relapsing. I kept taking her back, thinking her strep throat was back, but when they tested her she was negative.
I don't remember how quickly she relapsed and got better, because I had no idea about Lyme then. But, it did follow what you would expect from a strep throat recovery and relapse.
Since then, she has had a few abx that she responded to very quickly.
So I think what your daughter experienced could be from Lyme.
Posted by t9im (Member # 25489) on :
Hi MistyB:
Lyme has many symptoms and your daugher seems to have a few.
Our 10 yr old had the flu symptoms then the fatigue and anxiety to start.
I can't say if your daughter has Lyme or not but you should read Dr. B's guidelines and check the symptoms as a start.
You can go to the other board and seek a LLMD.
Posted by t9im (Member # 25489) on :
When this started our daugher was diagnosed with strep which caused the chronic fatigue. This infectious disease specialist we found out is one of the anti lyme / chronic lyme. He also prescribed an antidepressant to help with the sleep anxiety.
He never treated what was causing the symptoms.
I have heard some of Dr. J's interviews where he first started treating the Lyme children and they would improve while on meds but then become worse when treatment stopped.
I think if you start persuing Lyme (and don't forget co infections) it is better than just giving anti mood meds.
JMO and I'm not a doctor but like you the parent of a child with Lyme.
Posted by tick battler (Member # 21113) on :
Misty,
I have 3 young children with lyme and your daughter's symptoms sound like classic lyme/coinfections. The fact that she improved on the abx is another red flag saying "LYME."
Psych issues are HUGE with lyme as well. I have seen them in my children and husband, and they are improving with treatment. I am a believer that there is an infectious cause of bipolar or other psych issues, and lyme could very possibly be it in many cases.
tickbattler
Posted by hammer (Member # 17201) on :
My daughter had very similar symptoms. She had panic attacks instead of depression. All her
doctors tried to make it a psychological disorder despite the many other physical
problems. I can't tell you how many prescriptions we received for an antidepressant!
I kept fighting until we found out about lyme disease. All of her "psychological" issues
have been resolved with lyme treatment. I don't know if your daughter has lyme or not, but
please don't quit fighting for a root cause. My daughter would also get better every time we
gave her antibiotics for sinus or strep, but for some reason doctors overlook information like that. Good luck!
Tina
Posted by nefferdun (Member # 20157) on :
I hope you will take your daughter to a LLMD. One of the clinical approaches to determine if a person has lyme is to give antibiotics to see what the response is. If the person has lyme they will either get much worse because they abx are killing the infection and the die off is causing a temporary worsening of symptoms - or they will get better.
Obviously the antibiotics were attacking something which was making your daughter feel much better and when they were stopped she relapsed. It is clear that she needs to go back on the antibiotics until she is well - whatever the cause.
If it is lyme or related co-infections causing her psychological problems it will not improve on psych medicines. It will only get worse.
If your daughter had acne the doctor could prescribe long term antibiotics to clear her skin, so don't worry about the safety of using long term abx to treat a potentially lethal disease.