Welcome to my first blog post! If you have found yourself here you may be looking for pictures or stories about cuddly panda bears.
Unfortunately, this site is not about fuzzy panda bears it’s about an illness that too many children are being misdiagnosed with. An illness that is commonly misdiagnosed as a psychiatric disorder instead. This illness causes brain inflammation by a misdirected immune system response. In this website I will talk about a different type of PANDA, a horrible illness that my child acquired when she was 12. The good news is she is recovered, healthy and living a life she is supposed to live. I want to give hope to anyone beginning this journey, in the midst of it or feeling like they are getting close to the end but not quite there.
I want to say I’m not a writer, doctor or scientist and I am certainly not a blogger. There will be no medical advice given and anything I say about therapies that we have tried are not suggestions just merely what we have done to heal. Nothing should be used or tried without the consent approval of their physician. I am just a mom who would not accept that her daughter would become a completely different person and debilitated overnight after a virus. She went from a carefree, creative fun loving 12 year old to anisolated and reclusive child riddled with anxieties, ocd, restrictive eating and many other symptoms.
This site will start out very bare but you need all things have a beginning so that’s where I’m starting. My goal is to share our journey and maybe I might be able to help you or help someone you know or just lend some support and let you know that you are not alone. Because feeling alone is the one feeling that comes along with this awful illness not to mention the feeling of desperation because you just want to help your child recover and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to turn. I am here to say there are resources and with every passing day there are new discoveries and progress is being made to unravel the mystery of this commonly misdiagnosed illness.
So what is PANDAS anyways?
PANDAS stands for (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections) it occurs when strep triggers a misdirected immune response and results in inflammation on a child’s brain. In turn, the child quickly begins to exhibit life changing symptoms such as OCD, anxiety, tics, personality changes, decline in math and handwriting abilities, sensory sensitivities, restrictive eating, and many more symptoms.
The general term now being used is PANS (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome) is a clinically defined disorder characterized by the sudden onset of obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCD) or eating restrictions, along with acute behavioral deterioration. The trigger for PANS can be unknown or bacterial, viral, or environmental.The medical community is now moving toward using the term of Post-infectious Encephalitis which means inflammation of the brain after an infection.