http://www.leesburgtoday.com/news/students-tell-of-lyme-s-impact-in-the-classroom/article_3a618e98-b9a9-11e2-9c21-001a4bcf887a.html
Students Tell Of Lyme’s Impact In The Classroom
Lyme Forum: Brody Brown
“There were times when my brain just didn’t work and everything was a lot harder to do than what it used to be," Lyme sufferer Brody Brown tells the audience during the May 9 Loudoun County Lyme Commission forum as his mother, Dr. Carolyn Welsh, looks one.
Posted: Friday, May 10, 2013 3:38 pm | Updated: 4:40 pm, Fri May 10, 2013.
The Loudoun Lyme County Commission took its educational mission into the schools Thursday night with a special forum that focused on the impact the tick-borne disease can have on children.
The panel of speakers included two students who described how Lyme had affected their ability to perform schoolwork. Questions from parents illustrated a frustration in working with teachers and administrators to accommodate the disabling effects of the disease.
Brody Brown, an eighth grade student at Simpson Middle School, contracted Lyme the summer before entering third grade. After a hike at Ball’s Bluff, he found a tick behind his ear. Two weeks later he was very sick. His family—including his mother Dr. Carolyn Walsh who now is a member of the Lyme commission—didn’t accept the initial diagnoses of the flu. “I saw a lot of doctors,” Brody said, finally finding a specialist in Connecticut.
Even under treatment, Brody suffered. “There were times when my brain just didn’t work and everything was a lot harder to do than what it used to be. I used to find everything in school so easy, then I had trouble remembering whether I had breakfast that morning or not.”
Kathy Meyer is the co-organizer of the Northern Virginia Parents of Children with Lyme Support Network and is a member of the Governor’s Task Force on Lyme. She serves as a parent advocate as families wrestle with Lyme.
“Working with the schools is something that is really important,” she said. “At this point, some schools understand what is going on with the disease better than others. There are some schools that will think a child just has school-phobia or ‘its all on your head’ or they’re just lazy.”
“The hardest part for me was that I was lost all the time,” Brody said. “I had a hard time really doing things in school so I would come home and my mom would have to teach me concepts that seemed entirely new to me even though we had just spent hours going over them in school.”
Meyer said teachers can be among the first to notice Lyme symptoms.
“Sometimes the first inklings of [Lyme] will be that a child is not learning well or there are behavioral changes or their just fatigued, they can’t sit up in class or they’re having constant headaches. That’s something that has to be understood better by the schools.”
In cases where a Lyme diagnosis is made, students sometimes need special education considerations.
Madeline DuPuis, a junior at Heritage High School, got sick with Lyme disease in 2007, but didn’t find out the proper diagnoses until three years later. Her illness kept her out of school entirely, with five years of homebound instruction. “After intense treatment, countless doctor visits and a few surgeries I feel like I’m finally getting better,” she said.
Brody stayed in school, but had good days and bad days. While the parents often were called to pick him up when there was a rash or fever, Walsh said the family worked to keep a balance between time at home and at school.
Other questions from the audience focused on how to better protect children from Lyme and what steps the county and schools are taking to reduce ticks in parks and on playfields.
The answers were familiar:
• Remove ticks promptly with tweezers.
• Look for rashes or signs of sickness after a tick bite and call a doctor if there are concerns.
• The county government is in the early stages of evaluating areas to spray.
• The Board of Supervisors may expand managed deer hunts on public land.
• Best advice to follow: Conduct tick checks regularly following outdoor activities.
The program was part of the county’s “Loudoun Targets Lyme” campaign to address the epidemic occurrence of the disease. More than 200 new cases are reported each year in Loudoun, the county with the highest number of documented cases in Virginia. The Board of Supervisors-appointed Lyme Commission continues to assemble a large knowledgebase on the topic and resources are available onlinewww.loudountargetslyme.com and at www.facebook.com/LoudounTargetsLyme/.
Also there will be dozens of informational vendors gathered at Loudoun Valley High School Saturday, May 18, for the third annual Loudoun Lyme 5K. Information about that event can be found at www.loudounlyme.org.
Although there was a small audience on hand to hear information offered by a panel of speakers, Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA-10) and state delegates Tom Rust (R-86), Joe May (R-33), David Ramadan (R-87) and Randy Minchew (R-10) were among the attendees.
