The onset of our journey

It was January of 2023 when our healthy daughter had changed overnight. I never would have thought the strep throat she had in December would be the culprit. The mom “gut feeling” kicked in telling me something was not right. She started having severe separation anxiety, school refusals, counting and coughing ( tic), food regression, a phobia of vomiting and phobia of taking a bath, poor handwriting, light sensitivity and noise sensitivity. She also had a obsessive compulsive chewing she would of chewing hard then soft. She also was very irritable and her refusal for school was not only not wanting to go to school but also she wanted nothing to do with her friends. I knew deep down this was not the child she was the “night” before. I made a call to our primary care doctor. I was told it was anxiety and they wanted to prescribe her a SSRI for it. Again the mom feeling kicked in knowing that could not be the answer. I made a call to see another doctor at our same clinic who again said it was only anxiety and ordered her to psychologist and therapy. I was devastated that no one would help my daughter. Her school teacher was very open and communicated daily about her issues. He mentioned to me ” have you ever heard of PANDAS, someone’s daughter was diagnosed with it”. So he nicely provided my number to the other parent and we conversed back and forth about their diagnoses and where the sought out treatment. Of course I had not heard of it and immediately started researching PANDAS Syndrome. It was not until March of 2023 that we were able to find a doctor who was knowledgeable of PANDAS syndrome and willing to see our daughter. After seeing 3 primary doctors who were not Knowledgeable of PANDAS, I was so relieved and excited that someone was willing to help, yet terrified that our road ahead of us was going to be long and hard if it was PANDAS syndrome. Yet we stayed hopeful for this wonderful doctor to assist us at such a devastating time with our daughter.