So bad that he was said that he wanted to go to a mental hospital.
I told him that I thought that it was a really bad idea after hearing some horror stories about what happens to people w/lyme when they go to mental hospitals and explained that the psychiatrists try to retest for lyme with unreliable labs and unreliable tests like the ELISA, and think they are experts on Lyme after talking to an ID over the phone.

He let the mental hospital thing go for a couple of days and then brought it up again. My mom and I both said unless he was thinking of hurting himself or others it wasn't a good idea.

He let it go for a couple of days again, and then said he was thinking of suicide or hurting others. So we took him to the mental hospital.

He was released like 5 days later to an out-patient program. Anyways my aunt takes him to the appointment and I guess he got out early because while she was getting the perscription he just walks out of the building and no one saw him walk out of the building at all.

He was missing from fri at 2:15 till 7:00 yesterday. We were going crazy reporting it to the police and trying to get the kaiser to check the premesis to make sure he was there.

We didn't find out till saturday they never did a full check of the premesis, saturday we found out the police only did a suicide watch not a missing person's report as we had requested.

T.V. stations wouldn't report a missing person without a police report. So I was talking to people in the area and handing out flyers.

Anyways some police found him Saturday evening at a park and took him to the hospital and he was of course sent back to the mental hospital. The doctor then of course proceeds to tell us that his antibody test for lyme came back negative.

We ask him if it was an ELISA and he just says it was an antibody test (of course it probably was an ELISA that is all that Kaiser probably covers).

Anywho he goes on to tell us that Kaiser has an excellent ID department. We have an LLMD thank you very much--I am sure he probably doesn't know what that means.

So my mom tells him we have a test that proves that he had lyme antibodies (done by Igenex). I am so frustrated because my mom doesn't really know that much about lyme so she can't tell him where he is wrong.

I know that the psychiatrist is trying to undiagnose him. I don't understand why they think that they have the medical knowlege to do that after talking to an ID on the PHONE!

Anyways we are trying to get our LLMD to talk to him. In the meantime the psychiatrist proceeds to tell us that if he continues to be so unresponsive (to meds. etc. he is not talking at all right now) they want to do electro-shock therapy.

I cannot tell my mom how bad of an idea I think this is. My mom is only getting advice from these psychiatrists b/c our LLMD is not calling back and basically I am her daughter I am only 21. My opinion doesn't really hold much weight with her b/c she sees me as her child.

I am so glad I was not this out of it when I got Lyme because I can see that some very important decisions are being made without the best information.

Anyways I told her that we should at least wait until my dad has the SPECT scan done (the LLMD said he wanted to have a SPECT scan done to see how the lyme is effecting him mentally) and if he has this electro-"therapy" I am sure it would effect the SPECT scan.

Somebody please talk to my mom to tell her what to do or tell me. This is ridiculous.

The only ones I know are back east and the Lyme Disease Association can give you their names and phone numbers. Don't know how this is done, maybe it would involve paying for a phone consult. But it would be well worth it.

Sounds to me like you have a real head on your shoulders. So sorry this is happening to your family. You are right about Kaiser incompetence with Lyme. But then, they have a lot of company in that regard.

There are also a couple of good articles written about Lyme and mental issues. Think these can be located on the internet and printed out for your mom. I will look around and see if I can find links for you.

Here is one that has a number of articles you can browse and print. If this doesn't work for some reason, do a google search for Canadian Lyme. Their website has some articles by Dr. Bransfield.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030401184213/www.lymealliance.org/research/brans field/bransfield.php

[This message has been edited by lou (edited 23 January 2005).]