Give Lars a Chance for Healing and Hope

My precious son, Lars, and our family need your help! Although it is humbling to have to ask...it is much more than we can fulfill ourselves!!!

Nine years old (this week), he contracted an every.day ailment (last November), in which most heal from with a simple 10 day round of antibiotics. INSTEAD his immune system failed him and the antibodies crossed the blood brain barrier and attacked his basal ganglia, which controls everything from mood and personality to cognitive reasoning and thoughts and behaviors.

From a handsome, thriving, smart, artistic, empathetic, congenial, Jesus loving child to a tormented, rageful, digressing, anxiety filled, fatigued, completely different "sick" and unhealthy little human. His titers remained 4 times the highest of range, even 6 months after the acute infection.

Lars developed an autoimmune "disease" called PANDAS, Pediatric Autoimmune Neuro Psychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptoccocal Infections. This has affected every aspect of our lives and basically stolen the last year of his childhood. He now has encephalopathy and has told me he feels like his brain "is on fire!" He cannot function controllably, even attend school or be his extremely loving and calm self most days. It has cost us all financially and emotionally to the point of detriment and will take some time to regain traction and be able to catch our breath and honestly, cope with, survive and move beyond the trauma.

From 6+ months of antibiotics (and extremely expensive and harsh compounded prescriptions), several ER visits, a 2 week stay in the hospital, continuous needle sticks/lab draws, seeing multiple specialists across various states (pediatrician, infectious disease, neurologist, autoimmune, endocrinologist, psychologist, psychiatrist) to surgery (tonsillectomy), absences from work throughout (me, without being eligible for FMLA) and now homebound education, we are facing the next step in treatment with very realistic statistics for success...IVIG (Intravenous Immunoglobin infusion(s)). In a lot of cases, it only takes one high dose. However, South Carolina is not one of only 8 states that recognizes and treat this diagnosis.

Even after almost 30 years of performing this with positive results of "remission" status (minimize or absolve any symptoms and allow the developing brain and mind to not have long-term, everlasting or debilitating deficits) and even full recovery, insurance will most likely not cover any or only a very small portion of, after what could take months or years of appeals. We have to travel to a renowned doctor in the Chicago, IL area, in the next couple of weeks (scheduled 11/14 & 11/15), for efficacy following removal of tonsils...and, pay $15,000 for the "medicine" (blood product) and an additional $2750 for the MD's fee...not to account for travel accommodations to make it the 756 miles/12.5 hours and lodging and food along the way.

My family and friends have sacrificed tremendously already and this has turned our world upside down! It has robbed me of who my son was and changed the dynamics amongst all members of and inside our home. We have had to go to great measures to protect all and are living in a constant state of "fight or flight." Lars, very literally! With the frontal lobe swelling and damage, his Central Nervous System is hypersensitive and he is physically and mentally deteriorating...his quality of life and ours has declined drastically and we just want to offer him this chance for a "reset." He has been neurologically affected, physically lost weight, had his gut destroyed from medications and believes he is a "bad kid," because of his body's reaction to a common bacteria.

Again, this takes a lot to share the sensitive details of this season for my family and admit that we need assistance providing for our son and shining light into our very "dark" days (more often than not). The impact of this illness has been unimaginable and watching my child(ren) suffer has been nothing short of completely heartbreaking, and the stress is adding to my already broken and bad one to begin with (had 4 cardiac surgeries myself)!

Thank you for considering any amount possible to get my "baby" back!