"Unlike other conditions that follow predictable patterns, PANDAS/AE/NRA is unpredictable. There's no universal protocol that fits every scenario, no roadmap that guarantees the same outcome. It's like living on a battlefield, never knowing where the next attack will come from, which symptoms will flare, which triggers will strike, which treatments will help or hurt on any given day. You wake up each morning not knowing if today will be a good day or if your brain and body will turn against you without warning."
"To You Whose Lives Changed Overnight This letter is for you, PANDAS/AE kids who woke up one day and suddenly everything felt off. Your bodies didn't feel like your own. Your thoughts raced or slowed to a crawl. Fears appeared from nowhere. Tics and rituals took control. The world no longer felt safe. To those who once learned easily but now find school loud, chaotic, and exhausting."
Start-of-school images suggest hope, but many families face a different reality when children develop PANDAS, PANS, or autoimmune encephalitis. A caregiver describes dropping off a pale, anxious but determined son and acknowledges the child's courage after traumatic experiences. PANDAS/PANS/AE presents with sudden, unpredictable neurological and behavioral changes: racing or slowed thoughts, new fears, tics, rituals, sensory overload, and academic decline. Symptoms can flare without warning, triggers vary, and no universal treatment pathway exists. Children often feel misunderstood, isolated, and bullied by peers and sometimes misjudged by educators, therapists, family members, and clinicians.
Read at Psychology Today
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