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Young Girl Endures Bout of Lyme Disease, Bell's Palsy
Source: By Linda McCarty of The Winchester Star
Stephen's City, Va.
January 26, 2005
STEPHENS CITY - While Jessica Lemieux's close friends
were supportive and sympathetic, others in her peer-group
laughed and made fun of her when she couldn't smile or
close her left eye.
Jessica Lemieux suffered the symptoms of Bell's Palsy,
triggered by Lyme Disease, which included paralysis of
the facial nerve that distorts one side of the face. Her
facial nerves are now recovering.
The 10-year-old Orchard View Elementary School fifth-grader
is recovering from Bell's palsy, a paralysis of the facial
nerve that distorts one side of the face.
Jessica's mother, Linda Teets, said the palsy, which affected
the left side of Jessica's face, was triggered by a recent
bout of Lyme disease, which comes from the bite of an
infected deer tick.
"It was very different and very embarrassing at school
when I tried to smile," said Jessica, who is getting
her smile back and is having more success at blinking
her eye. "When people made fun of me, I just ignored
them,"
Teets, a fourth-grade teacher at Armel Elementary School,
said Jessica began running a fever of about 102 degrees
in November.
"She was complaining of a sore neck, and the area
behind her left ear was very red, sore," said Teets,
a Stephens City area resident. "Jessica said her
ear felt like she had a sunburn and said her joints were
aching."
Teets took her daughter to see her pediatrician, who diagnosed
Jessica with a viral infection.
Late one Saturday night, Jessica's temperature jumped
up to 104.5 degrees, and Teets took her to Urgent Care
the following morning.
"The doctor at Urgent Care ordered a lot of tests
and concluded that from the redness behind her ear, she
had cellulitis (a subcutaneous inflammation of connective
tissue) and prescribed an antibiotic," Teets said.
Teets suspected that it may have been Lyme disease after
finding out what the symptoms were on the Internet, but
the doctor didn't test for it.
"That night there was a ring around Jessica's ear,"
Teets said, "and I took a picture of it."
Jessica also told her mother that she picked something
she thought may have been small scab from behind her ear.
"I think it was a deer tick," Teets said.
The Urgent Care doctor tested Jessica for Lyme disease
at Teets request, when she returned with her daughter
for a follow up visit.
But the test was negative.
Jessica began feeling better and the redness and ring
went away, until about three days after taking her last
pill, when the infection returned and the redness behind
her ear had spread.
The doctors at Urgent Care continued giving Jessica antibiotics.
Then one day Jessica's after-school sitter noticed that
her face was partially paralyzed.
"When she tried to smile, the left side of her face
wouldn't move and her left eye wouldn't close," Teets
said. "I was scared to death."
"I was scared too," Jessica said. "I didn't
know what was happening to me. I didn't know if my face
was going to stay that way or maybe even get worse."
Teets took Jessica to the Winchester Medical Center's
emergency department, where a doctor diagnosed her daughter
with Lyme disease and Bell's palsy, even though those
tests showed up negative too.
"He told me that the tests were sometimes false-negative,
and he thought it was Lyme disease that caused the Bell's
palsy," Teets said.
The doctor, who had never treated a young child with Bell's
palsy, consulted doctors at the University of Virginia
Medical Center, where a similar case had been treated,
to figure out what to prescribe for Jessica.
The doctor told Teets that about 95 percent of patents
completely recover from Bell's palsy.
"But I've been worried about the 5 percent who don't,"
Teets said.
Teets, though, is seeing almost daily improvements with
her daughter's facial muscles and believes she will make
a full recovery.
"But now I'm afraid she'll get a virus and it will
come back," Teets said.
Jessica said the worst part of her ordeal was when she
became very sad because she couldn't laugh.
According to statistics provided by the Lord Fairfax Health
District, 93 cases of Lyme disease were reported in Virginia
in 1993. There were 259 cases reported in 2002.
**** Letters to the Editor:
news@winchesterstar.com.
****TOIL for Lyme****
T = Teach tolerance
0 = Overcome ignorance
I = Initiate insurance reform
L = Labor for Lyme literacy/advocacy
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