Lyme- missed symptoms

Some blood sucking tick bit my little Rachael. When? We don't know.. maybe back in September. She had a few random low grade fevers in early fall. A random headache would bother her occasionally. In October we brought her in for her headaches, but nothing came out of it. A sore joint would bother her for a few days, one week a sore elbow, 2 weeks later a sore knee. She is so active that these "injuries" didn't really alarm me, except that she couldn't remember an injury. By November Rachael was more sensitive to touch and occasionally limped. Most days she would be bounding around in her loud way.  But then I'd hear her complain that someone hurt her, frequently me. A nudge on a shoulder or pressure on her arm could cause her to pull away, and then the next day it would be fine. Then she got a rash. At the same time her ankle started hurting and it got to the point that she couldn't walk on it. She stayed home from school the days before Thanksgiving because she was hobbling around. She made use of Jim's crutches but wasn't happy to have her body put the brakes on. We brought her into our pediatrician and he gave her a thorough exam. He checked the rash and even had another Doctor come look at her rash. They concurred that it looked like simple contact dermatitis. As for the ankle, they diagnosed it as a sprain. Our doctor mentioned maybe doing blood tests but Rachael hated the idea and he wasn't really expecting to find any thing so he decided not to order them. The pain went away after a few days of not walking and on we went into December.

In December she couldn't use her arm for a day because her shoulder hurt. I talked with the school nurse after Rachael showed up there with ankle pain. She mentioned Lyme but disregarded the idea. Rachael was her normal self most days but then the day after Christmas her knee and arm were hurting again. I brought her in to our Pediatrician. Rachael was adamant that she didn't want a needle but it was determined that something had to be going on, and we needed to find out what. She got through her blood draws and we soon found out that she had Lyme Disease.

She started a 3 week course of strong antibiotics and the pains went away. Until this week. She was limping again and complaining of pain. She was struggling in the evenings and was very fatigued. So today I brought her back in. She checked out fine, and wasn't having any pain at the time but Rae will continue with antibiotics just to be safe.  I hope this is the last she has to deal with Lyme.