AnneLyze

School ends this week and I’m so happy. My 14yo son, Ben is even happier. For the next two plus months, I will not have to drag him out of bed, beg him to shower in under forty minutes, try to get him to move along while he studies his “Fischer Price” first beard in the mirror, tap my toe waiting for him to carefully chew each individual bite of his four waffles, grit my teeth when he  s  l  o  w  l  y  gathers his stuff and ambles to the car so we can fight traffic and rush to get to school. My mornings will be blessedly stress free and I will get to work on time. Ben has been late to school more mornings than he has been on time. We blame many things including the length of time it takes to get ready, weather, traffic, a faulty alarm clock, and forgetting his school ID. Ben blames me for not waking him up early enough (waking the dead may be easier) and Albany High School for starting too early after all “everybody knows teenagers can’t ...

No one knew why, but by Thanksgiving Ben had physically recovered and was doing better in school. The only class he was struggling in was Geometry, his teacher still not in his corner and a subject that was not one of Ben’s strengths. It was not a good combination. A gray, cold, wet day outside the window probably had a better chance of catching Ben’s interest. In early December, Dr CCCCC called. Ben had a positive titer for Anaplasmosis, a tick borne infection that was very rare. So rare, that she herself had to study up on it. She couldn’t say with 100% assuredly that it was the cause of his illness, but the symptoms matched and it was the only answer she had. The cure, Doxycycline, was something he had been taking since September for his acne. Looking back, I wonder if Ben’s brain had been affected, possible with this disease and that it was the key to his doing so poorly at school. I mourned for my sweet boy who was looked upon as a failure by some of his teachers and I ...

Part 1, Please note, some names have been changed. Maybe it began at a soccer game in Averill Park. The team won 3-0 and Ben scored all three goals. I brought home a happy, sunburned kid but ten other mothers brought home a boy with a tick. Or maybe it started at another soccer field, his Dad’s place in Berne, from the dog, the cats or maybe we’ll never know. But something bad had started to brew last spring. One Sunday, a month or so later, he had a sore throat. Blood work was drawn, the throat swabbed and by Tuesday they called it strep throat. Thursday, at eighth grade graduation, the sore throat was gone, but he didn’t feel well and didn’t want to eat or celebrate with his friends after the ceremony. Ben just wanted to get out of the sun and lie down. By the end of the weekend he had stopped eating, ached everywhere, his vision off, sunlight was torture, he was dizzy and his head throbbed. Our pediatrician, of over 20 years, Dr XXXXX and his partner Dr YYYYYY, either saw Ben ...