Jonah has been diagnosed
with Lyme's disease.
So many questions come to mind:
1. Can't this poor kid ever catch a break? He just keeps getting "things" that make him feel lousy.
2. Where/How did he get this? Yes we do go camping, but we are very careful about checking the boys every night before bed for ticks. On 6-15, I did pull a tick off of Jonah, but doctors are telling me that probably wasn't the tick that caused this if we pulled it off easily. I do remember I had to give a slight tug to remove it, but there didn't appear to be any bite on him at the time. So this probably means we missed a tick on him which led to this. This is frustrating and scary to me because we were trying to be so careful and diligent.
3. Will this just be a straightforward case of treating with 21 day antibiotics and that's the end of it? The doctors seem to think there will be no lingering issues since they feel it was diagnosed in the early stage. I'm praying there are no long-term issues for Jonah- as I said above, this kid needs to catch a break.
Just a point of interest: When I brought Jonah in on 6-28 for his 2nd urine culture, I did mention to that 2nd doctor that I had pulled a tick off of Jonah on 6-16. To me, the timing lined up with this possibly being Lymes along with the symptoms of fever, headache, and vomiting. The doctor dismissed my suggestion of testing for Lymes (and it may have been too early for accuracy in all reality).
Then when the bulls-eye rash appeared on 7-9, we returned to the original doctor from 6-24. This time I strongly communicated my suspicions of Lyme's disease because of this rash and the symptom of neck pain that had developed since 6-28. This 1st doctor agreed with my suspicions and ordered the Lyme's test. She also proactively started Jonah on the 21 day antibiotics used for Lymes.
A few days later the 2nd doctor called to check up on Jonah and made the comment to me that this was a great catch by doctor #1 to suspect and test for Lymes. WHAT? I think Dr. Mom was the one to first put that idea in motion!
Oh well, I kept my mouth shut and didn't defend myself. Like I said, testing for Lymes back on 6-28 might have caused an unreliable test result because it was too early. So in the end, it all worked out and the Lymes disease got treated in the early stage which is what is most important.
It's just interesting to me, how much I can continue to doubt my "Dr. Mom" instincts even after all the rodeos little Jonah has been through. I just knew something wasn't right when Jonah was so strongly complaining of head and neck pain. Jonah has a high pain tolerance so for him to complain of anything hurting means it must really hurt! Also in 10 plus years, Jonah has never mentioned his head or neck hurting so I knew this wasn't just a common complaint of his. And finally, Jonah has a hard time staying on task for most things so the idea of him being able to fake/pretend/exaggerate head and neck pain for over 2 weeks is very unlikely. There is no way he would remember to keep pretending that long.
Hopefully, we can get this Lymes disease cleared up along with Jonah's left kidney getting back to normal, and then Jonah can be done with anything medical for a long time!
That is my prayer!
