Update on my son

[JudyLV]

I introduced my 12 year old son last month. We have gotten some interesting test results since then. His strep titres were negative. He had hurt his foot and had sore joints so we saw an orthepedic doctor. He has a stress fracture in his heel along with bone marrow edema and his Lyme screening test is positive. We have had some more testing for Lyme and coinfections and are awaiting results. For now we know the antibodies that indicate you had Lyme (IgG) are positive and there is controversy as to if you should treat until those are negative. They apparently can stay positive for months or maybe years but he had Lyme in 2002. I am wondering if my son's anxiety, vocal tics, and OCD could be related to Lyme.

 

Observations I have made with regard to vocal tics are the 2 times he has been sick recently he stopped the vocal tics. The first time he had a sore throat and cold and stopped the tics for about a week. I asked him about it at one point and he said he just had not "felt the urge" to make the sounds. Unfortunately they did come back.

 

My son has an increase in vocal tics when he comes home from school. If he goes to the basement to play video games after school they are worse than if he comes home and reads. If we know they will be worse during the time he plays video games after school is there a reason for him not to do that? It is a controlled environment and it is a release (my feeling is that he holds the tics in during school and they have to come out). Or is there some information indicating if all situations that trigger tics are avoided that they will decrease. I should probably know the answer to this after all of the reading I have done but I really went off on a tangent researching Lyme Disease again and my brain is saturated with information.

 

I should also mention that I found a therapist to work with and she has given me some good suggestions on cutting down on the bedtime OCD routine and anxieties. If I need to go back to her after we sort out the Lyme stuff I certainly will.

 

Thanks for any input.

 

--Judy

[faith]

Hi Judy,

My son also seemed in the past to quiet on the vocal when sick with a virus (like a 24 hr. bug with vomiting). I think we have discussed this somewhere on the board, I'll try to look for that so you can go over that thread if you want. ... I don't know anything about the Lyme, but I'd be interested to know if it ties in somewhere.

 

As far as his vocal being more when playing video, once again, there is probably alot about that here too, and I am once again revisiting that issue, since my son has had a flair up of any eye twitch which I noticed started only when using computer games and watching tv, and after a couple of weeks, seemed to be all the time, so my feeling is that maybe the photosensitivity thing is at play here and I am taking him away from that for a while to see. (There is lots of discussions here about photosensitivity and increase when using video games and screens so maybe you could use the search to read up on that). ....Also I'd be interested to know about the suggestions and bed time, my son has his rituals, but they are more like he just has to do things routinely, like have a snack, then lay in bed a little while before he wil brush his teeth, etc. Does your son have OCD rituals?

 

Faith

[JudyLV]

Faith,

 

The bedtime routine involved lots of checking doors, thermostat setting, and getting things set just so in my son's room. Then he had a series of questions he had to ask my husband, and then, me 3 times each. He then insisted that everyone in the house should be quiet. This was imposing on the rest of us--especially his older siblings.

 

It was suggested that he get a sound machine alarm clock and then if noises are bothering him he can turn that on to block out other sounds. Unfortunately he does not like this too much but it is a tool he can use to control his environment. We are working on cutting back the questions. It was suggested that he should ask them once and then write them down if he needs to. All of this is substituting one thing for another but the point is to remove my involvement (which he had become dependent on). He seems a bit more relaxed at bedtime. Initially he feared that "something bad would happen" if he did not repeat everything 3 times. He is cutting back and seeing that nothing bad is happening so I think we are making progress.

 

One thing that has helped is getting the books What to do when your brain gets stuck and What to do when you worry too much. Both are by Dawn Huebner. My son was greatly relieved to read that other people have the same types of thoughts/obsessions that he has. I am glad we have taken some steps to cut back on the bed time routine because it was getting out of hand.

 

--Judy

[amy1]

from our experience my daughter tics more at home---i think she is just more comfortable and she can "let her hair down" and be herself---when we have gone to disney or universal her tics seem especially high, maybe it's the excitement your son feels with the video games and he is at home and can let it out---

on the anxiety bedtime issue my daughter is so anxious at night, she asks me where i'm going when i leave the room, am i going to go outside, where will i be when she wakes up, etc. i get tired of reassuring her all the time as it doesn't seem to help. we go to church and one time i brought home some "holy oil". i had told our priest that we were struggling and he gave me some to use with her. sometimes we put it on each other's heads and pray for each other. that seems to help and reassure her.