leroy ny

[oivay]

It looks like things may be starting again upstate.

My mom called me to tell me that apparently some more kids have been diagnosed with a "mysterious tic like illness" as it was on the news up there.

 

It should be interesting.............

[thenmama]

Yep-- and guess who's shamelessly self-promoting, I mean, hogging the stage, I mean, stealing the spotlight, I mean, seeing the patients... whew, finally got that that out. Dr. WTF is HIPPA, anyway? Mechtler, of course. And naturally, the school officials and DOH have issued statements claiming the cases are not caused by infection, the environment, or anything else with any sort of liability attached.

 

Article:2 new cases

 

Excerpts:

 

"A physician who’s treated one of the two students blamed the new symptoms on recent publicity about the earlier outbreak in Le Roy."

 

Dr. Laszlo Mechtler, a Buffalo-area neurologist who treated or consulted on many of earlier the Le Roy cases, said he believes the two newly afflicted students also have a mass psychogenic illness.

 

He told the Democrat and Chronicle’s Gannett affiliate WGRZ-TV in Buffalo that he has seen one of the two new cases and is scheduled to meet with the other.

 

WGRZ-TV reported that Mechtler attributed the two new cases and the recent recurrence of symptoms in a third patient on local media coverage of an Aug. 22 public meeting in Le Roy called by environmental advocate Erin Brockovich."

 

 

The new cases are supposedly due to media coverage that drew the patients' attention to the previous cases, which means these new patients acquired the conversion disorder by seeing something about the prior/resolved cases in the local media, but without exposure to sick classmates/peers and well after the fact when there was no active frenzy/contagion playing out locally. And yet somehow these two new patients didn't fall ill with conversion disorder back when the town was in the media spotlight and full of reporters, and kids in their school/small town could be seen in person actively twitching and writhing as the outbreak endured. The media exposure that supposedly caused the recent cases would have been only whatever presumptively small to moderate buildup the Brokovich meeting would have generated in the local media. So, if Mechtler's correct and CD can be spread with only limited media exposure in the absence of active cases/contagion/outbreak in the geographical region, then how come people all over the country, or world, weren't busting out with CD when the LeRoy girls were a major media focus for weeks or months on end? Why no global MPI outbreak (in the info age-- all media all the time) when people everywhere were seeing a whole lot more of the LeRoy illness than these new patients would have seen in August?

[kos_mom]

Honestly! Two new cases months after the first outbreak constitute a mass conversion disorder? When we saw Dr. T at end of August and I explained to him we kept getting somataform disorder (aka conversion disorder) for DD's symptoms, he said the longer he practiced the less he believed in the somataform dx. Somataform and conversion disorders are supposed to be dxes of exclusion--these means all other possibilities must be investigated and excluded before making this psychiatric dx. Real life is they do one test, it comes in negative, and so the symptoms must be psychological. This really shows a lack of medical intellectual curiousity and integrity.

 

Dr. T also said DD reminded him of the girls in Le Roy...

[Fixit]

 

This really shows a lack of medical intellectual curiousity and integrity.

 

 

 

AMEN!!!!

[oivay]

Mechtler really is a one-trick pony, isn't he?

I'm honestly shocked that parents will still take their children to such an idiot. And that he gets paid for it.

[Missmom]

Have not seen this on any of the national news networks yet!

[tpotter]

Interestingly, this is about the same time last year when everything started. This is the season when mycoP, strep, et al, start rearing their ugly heads. Last year, it was found that many of the girls had strep, many had mycoP (there was an overlap in several girls,) and 2 were CDC positive for lyme. Plus, of course, we know that there appears to be environmental concerns, as well.

 

My guess is that the new girls don't know about taking their kids to anyone other than Dr. Metchler, and that is just so very sad.

 

I find it terribly odd that so many girls from one small area all get a similar illness/symptoms at roughly the same time 2 years in a row. This is so not conversion disorder (I'm not saying what it is...I'm not a doctor...but it's not conversion disorder.) If it was cancer they were all getting, there would be studies galore to find out "why the cluster", and no one would be claiming "conversion disorder!"

 

Sad, sad, sad!

[thenmama]

Sadder still: if it was the LeRoy football team boys getting the same illness as the girls, nobody would be claiming conversion disorder.

[Missmom]

I also wonder if any of them got any vaccines before school this year? But I also agree that the time of year is suspicious?

[thenmama]

In the outbreak last year they there wasn't a common vax history--not of recent vaccinations and not all had the Gardasil vax (and I think among those who had it was not given near the time of the outbreak). The two things I think about when I think about the timing and seasons/Fall are seasonal allergies and common infection cycles/seasons, as tpotter astutely points out. She's not a doctor-- she just knows more than some doctors:)

[tpotter]

I also wonder if any of them got any vaccines before school this year? But I also agree that the time of year is suspicious?

 

 

Did they spray for West Nile or anything like that? Or, could West Nile even be playing a roll in this (I now actually suspect that my DS may have originally triggered with West Nile...I don't think it was the only thing going on, but at least one of the triggers.) And, yes...if it was the boy's football team, there would not be conversion disorder suspected (now if it was the girl's team...)

[oivay]

It is interesting how it happens about two weeks after they start school. Maybe it's just because they're all together and swapping germs in such a communal setting.

I totally agree that the response would be different if they were all boys.

 

Looks like Mechtler is on the case again and misdiagnosing.....

[JAG10]

There is definitely something to the cyclical illness theory. I remember before I got married I had the stomachs flu on Christmas Eve/Christmas day for 3 years in a row. My to-be MIL thought I was trying to avoid going to her house for the holiday and actually said....who gets the same illness on the same day 3 years straight? Well, wouldn't you know my MIL and all the in-laws who live in Baltimore have gotten the stomachs flu the week before Thanksgiving, this will be year #3.....and we bring it home with us after visiting them. Someone once told me getting a stomach virus 3 years in a row like that, to the day, is one long virus related to Malaria, but I don't know if that is true.

 

I know my girls have both gotten strep 3 years now between the first and second weeks of August. We don't get strep all the time, so it sticks out in my mind. I think allergies do play a significant role as well. I've had friends complain about fuzzy thinking and poor word retrieval lately which could be related to the increased workload of "back to school" but could also be related to allergies.

The thought of a virus hanging out in your body for 3 years just waiting for the right day to impose its will on you gives me the creeps.

[thenmama]

Thanks for giving me your creeps, too, JAG, with that stalker virus image

 

I've made a "medical history overview" document for each of my kids that is laid out like a spreadsheet. It contains dates and the basic info about each issue/dr's visit: symptoms/issue, dx, hx, etc. I keep it in the front of their med records binder as a quick reference so I can easily see and reference whatever illness or issue I'm looking for without flipping through their full record set (which contains records and reports in all sorts of different formats from various docs). If I need more details about anything, the overview also helps me find it more quickly because I know where in the binder to look for that specific record.

 

Interestingly, doing this also revealed some surprising seasonal patterns. I probably would have remembered some of them were around the same time of year, but the timing has been really oddly spot on for a couple of things, and there were some things I never would have thought to look at as cyclical, but occur in what looks to be a pattern.