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A mother brought her 10-year-old son to my office after eighteen months of declining health. He’d gone from an active, curious kid to one who couldn’t finish a school day. He struggled with headaches, fatigue, and what his teachers called “attention problems.” Three specialists had found nothing. His pediatrician suggested anxiety. When I reviewed his […]

A parent’s guide to recognizing and treating pediatric Lyme disease in children Pediatric Lyme disease often presents differently than Lyme disease in adults. Children may struggle to describe symptoms clearly. Behavioral or cognitive changes may precede obvious physical complaints. Subtle decline may be attributed to stress, growth, or school difficulty rather than infection. This page

Your child can’t concentrate in school. They’re exhausted by 2 PM. Joint pain keeps them off the soccer field. The doctor prescribes antibiotics for Lyme disease—based entirely on studies that never included a single child. Not one child was included in the major NIH Lyme disease trials that established standard treatment approaches. Most treatment guidelines

Lyme Disease Seizures in Children: 4-Year-Old’s Story Lyme disease seizures in children are rare but serious. Lyme disease seizures in children can occur when infection affects the brain and nervous system, triggering inflammation that disrupts normal neurologic function. A 4-year-old boy developed status epilepticus requiring intubation—no warning, no fever, no obvious cause. When seizures didn’t

Pediatric Lyme Disease: Why Children Are Misdiagnosed Pediatric Lyme disease rarely looks like the textbook descriptions clinicians learn in medical school. While adults often present with fatigue and joint pain, children may develop sudden behavioral changes, academic struggles, and psychiatric symptoms that are attributed to other causes. This diagnostic blind spot means many children spend

When this family brought their son to me, they were facing a decision many parents encounter when delaying pediatric Lyme treatment—whether fear of antibiotics might outweigh the risk of waiting. They were not opposed to treating Lyme disease. But fear stood in the way. Not fear of Lyme disease itself, but fear of the treatment.

Lyme screening is rarely part of routine medical care, even in regions where tick exposure is common. When early Lyme disease is not recognized, diagnosis and treatment are often delayed until symptoms become more complex and disruptive. In children, these delays can affect learning, behavior, and long-term health during critical stages of development. For a

When Clinical Judgment Overrides Negative Testing A 6-year-old child presented to her pediatrician with a circular rash on the left side of her face. The pediatrician initially suspected allergic dermatitis and prescribed topical steroids. However, the rash failed to improve, explain Banadyha and colleagues in their case report. Over the following six weeks, the rash