What is PANS?

 Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome

This is really just for the people who are here because of Lyme disease. For so many years, I just thought I had neurological Lyme. I guess that's what it is, but there's so much more to it. Now, you could easily look up the actual definition, but I'm going to give a brief explanation of what it is to me. PANS is autoimmune encephalitis, which is when an infection spreads to the brain. To sum it up, in my opinion, it is every psychiatric, neurological, and cognitive disorder in one. Maybe that's not exactly true according to experts (I haven't asked anyone), but that's what it is like to me. It's as horrible as it sounds. As I said before, I was diagnosed when I was 20, and we've been trying to treat it since then. Before that, we were just treating Lyme disease in hopes that all of these neurological issues would go away as well. I did need to treat my Lyme, so I don't regret any of that, but I do wish it would've been acknowledged much earlier. These issues, especially the psych issues, have ruined not only my life but everyone around me as well. The main symptom that everyone around me could see was severe anger issues. Inside, there was so much more going on which I will go more in-depth on at a later date. It all just sucks. To diagnose, I had to get the Cunningham Panel and an MRI. I've never actually seen that MRI. Maybe I can get it and I'll share. I didn't realize the Cunningham Panel was so "controversial"(really just not thinking it's worth it) but for me, it was the most relieving thing to see. I saw that and you'll see at some point how elevated each one was, and I looked at what each thing meant and felt the most relief I have ever felt. Of course, that doesn't erase the damage that has been done, but it made me feel a lot better knowing that I wasn't just a horrible person. As we all know, with both of these diseases, it is impossible to find good doctors, and it took forever to find a great neurologist, too. I'm so grateful for where I'm at with everything right now and am looking forward to finally making progress on all of this. 

And just know that I'm not in any kind of treatment right now, so if these are ever hard to read, that is why lol. I'm doing my best over here hahaha.