Interesting Findings

When I was digging into the information the lab tests gave me, I noticed issues with LH levels in children can be due to chronic illnesses. When I was around a year old I had a seizure while my mom was napping with me. She felt me get warm and as she was rousing herself I seized and stopped breathing. She called my dad at work while performing CPR on our kitchen table and was able to rouse me before the ambulance found the house (our house is the last on a dirt drive way nearly a mile off the paved state road – and back when I was a baby there was no GPS to help find the location). I checked out fine in the hospital and the seizure was blamed on a sudden spike in my temperature. For the next 3 years I was constantly getting fevers and sore throats, to the point that when my parents felt me getting warm they would take me fully clothed and jump into a tepid shower – children’s Tylenol did not work fast enough to stop the fever from building and causing another seizure. I was prescribed bubblegum flavored penicillin on a regular basis until I had my tonsils out at 4 years old. Then the fevers and sore throats stopped. It was all blamed on my tonsils, but in my searching recently I believe I was misdiagnosed. Or maybe this diagnosis didn’t exist when I was a child. I believe I suffered from periodic adenitis pharyngitis aphthous ulcer syndrome (PFAPA). Basically,  what this mouthful means is that I would have cyclical bouts of high fevers accompanied by sore throats, mouth sores (which I don’t remember) and body aches for seemingly no reason. Between episodes I was symptom free. In my reading I discovered often times having the tonsils and adenoids (I still have my adenoids) removed, for reasons unknown to the medical community, can stop the cycle. If not, most children grow out of PFAPA by the time they hit double digits.

 

How strange to read about a syndrome and see it describe your life to a T but never having been applied to you by a medical professional. The sad part is, I was doused with antibiotics to the point where penicillin does little for me when this would not have been necessary, according to my research. I did not uncover the answer to my original question, if this has anything to do with pushing my body out-of-line with certain hormones, but the discovery was notable regardless. The other thing to note is that this syndrome is genetically connected, so if I had been able to have children they might have had the same issues. I know my father had his tonsils out as a child but the doctor had claimed his were truly infected, at least from what my grandmother recalls. So, did my dad unknowingly pass this along to me? I guess it’s possible. It seems unlikely there is any link between PFAPA and PCOS so, theoretically I had two separate syndromes affecting my life and my health. If the precluding syndrome (PFAPA) kicked off the future syndrome (PCOS) due to chronic fever/inflammation in my body, it might explain why my sister doesn’t seem to struggle with the same weight/menstrual issues that I do and follows more closely to our mother’s experience. Genetics are a big old bowl of crazy and the combinations and possibilities often times seal our fate even before we were born. Academically, it is interesting to learn, but emotionally, it’s hard to think I might never have stood a chance. I’m curious as to what the Nutritionist RN will say about what I’ve uncovered.