His use of alcohol increased in high school and he was recently caught with drugs in college and has agreed to go for a rehab evaluation. Also, when he was younger he had excellent grades in school and now he on academic probation in college.

I don't know how long I have had lyme. I grew up on a lake in Pennsylvania and had horrible knee pain as a child and the bottoms of my feet burned so much I couldn't sleep and i would put ice on them, which didn't work. I breastfed him for 18 months and I have read that LB has been detected in breast milk.

Any thoughts about this? Thank you.

We all tend to self medicate for pain by a variety of means. Hopefully reducing the pain properly will reduce his need to self medicate.

Finding the cause of his pain and other symptoms can only help him feel better about himself and life in general.

From my own experience, I drank heavily for quite a few years pre-diagnosis. I'm now in treatment and only rarely drink. The desire tappered off as treatment progressed.

I also thought I had cancer and started smoking again.

OCD behaviors of course will return with the depression and confusion in trying to deal with the loss of bodily and mental control.

I think your son should be checked as well. Many find they have had lyme most of their lives by the time they fall apart.

My parents were alcholhics. I beleive my mother had lyme, and that I was born with it. Many will turn to drugs and alchol to cope as well as over the counter drugs and anti-anxiety meds etc.

I think what often happens with couples with lyme is the women will be dxd as having a coping problems like mental illnes and the man as a alcholic/drug abuser.

My son just tested postive for lyme. I have known as long as I have known about myself and matched all my symptoms back to childhood and looked at what my mother went through. He got this from the womb, this I have no doubt.

Did your son have a lazy eye, or eye problems as a kid? Lots of ear infections, ADD type behavoir, or very hyper or overly shy and withdraw, nervous stomach/bowel problems. Difficutly coping with stress and new situations? Sepraration anxiety worse than most kids? I find these are big kid symptoms, but dont' know if is documented anywhere. Keep a cold and get a secndary bacterial infection with most colds requiring abx? Nervous habits?

I would definitly take him, better to be safe than sorry.

Good luck
Lymiecanuck

And then to the archives of previous issues. What you are looking for is the Winter 2001/Spring 2002 issue. Pages 14-16 include the article, the second case she describes may be more relevant to your situation. But you might also enjoy reading other articles in that issue, like the one on Dr. Jones that starts on page 5. These files are in PDF format, so you need to have adobe acrobat to read it. Available free online to download if you don't already have it.

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