Bugs in the System 

That’s what happened to Suri B., whose ten-year-old son came home from camp bearing a plastic bag with a large tick inside, courtesy of the camp nurse. “The tick is pretty large, so it was probably feeding on your son for some time,” she said.

Suri knew that tick bites can transmit Lyme disease, so she brought the tick to her pediatrician. The tick was sent to the lab for analysis, and the doctor expressed relief: “It’s a dog tick, not a deer tick, so it doesn’t carry Lyme,” she said. “You have nothing to worry about.”

Three months later her son developed severe abdominal cramps that seemed to have nothing to do with what he ate. In the attempt to cure his symptoms, Suri brought him to a battery of specialists who subjected him to X-rays, other testing, hospital visits, and medications.

Before long, this formerly outgoing, funny, and talented child withdrew socially, and his mental state spiraled downward. At first, his pediatricians dismissed it as normal mood swings of pre-puberty and the pressures of school and social life. But her son’s mental state didn’t get better with time. Fearing he might have been traumatized by abuse, she took him to a psychotherapist.