Tickwatch!

I am on tick watch. I have to keep my eyes open every day, do tick checks on my kids, encourage them to enjoy the outdoors with my heart in my mouth, teach them to be safe without teaching them to be fearful, never completely let my guard down. I am on a trip, to …

Doing the joy dance (or: popping pills)

It might seem like a small thing, especially to an adult who does it all the time, but for my son, swallowing pills has not been possible ... until yesterday. This might seem like a small thing, but the daily number and volume of bad smelling, bad tasting liquids we've had to ask him to …

Chelation?

So, as I mentioned, my 6 year old has been diagnosed with heavy metals. In particular, he had a very high amount of lead in his urine on a "provoked urine test". As a result, I find myself in a similar realm of uncertainty as I did when the Lyme diagnosis arrived -- except that …

Loss and Control

In the past couple of months, I've had to make an unexpected transition, from patient to caregiver. As a caregiver, I am faced with all the uncertainties I faced as a patient, and the additional responsibility of asking an innocent to step into the unknown with me. He has placed his trust in me completely, …

Storms and fevers

My son had one of his most difficult days in weeks today. He had a doctors visit, which he physically fought to avoid, followed by the realization that he will need bloodwork tomorrow and monthly afterwards. At the doctor's office he heard that he has something else wrong with him -- Lead -- that will …

Helping a 6 year old to buy into his own treatment

One of the more challenging parenting experiences I've had in years has been the process of helping my son to accept and support our efforts to treat his Lyme disease. He dislikes medicine (in general) and especially dislikes medicine that has a bad aftertaste (as his Ceftin does). As a result, we have in the …

Finding a doctor

Once we figured out that my son had probably been exposed to lyme disease, my first step was finding a doctor who could confirm my layperson's diagnosis and help us determine how to treat him. I felt a sense of urgency because I was worried about the 18 month lag in treatment (minimum) and the …

Diagnosing Lyme in my son

I have waited a long time to make this post, for a two reasons. One is that I am still weighing the implications of writing about someone else's life so publicly. Another is that I felt uncomfortable discussing anything here before I had told him what we discovered. I have resolved the latter and, at …

Thanks, mom

I've been trying to think of the right way to say thank you to my mother for over two weeks now (ever since I realized mother's day was coming up :). But it was only recently that I finally realized what I want to do.  This post is for her. Let me start by describing …

And then joy

False positive! I will be double checking this with the local lyme expert on Friday, but it was his *IGm* not IGg that was positive, which would indicate an infection in the last month or so. Since he couldn't have gotten sick in the last month, it's probably a false positive. Not only that, every …