Ticks cause major problem for Sartell family

by Dave DeMars

news@thenewsleaders.com

Warm weather is here, or at least it’s on its way. That means the nasties of spring and summer are coming along, as well – mosquitoes, bugs and ticks. Nobody knows about ticks and the troubles they can cause better than Rebecca Kurowski and her son, Grant. Both of them have suffered from Lyme disease.

Lyme disease is caused by deer ticks. Both Kurowski and son Grant got bit somewhere and sometime, though neither can rightly say where and when.

“We never came across the ticks,” Rebecca said. “We both had very different symptoms at different times.”

The Kurowskis live in a typical suburban area of Sartell with bushes and shrubs in the area. The Kurowskis love the outdoors and spend lots of time outside in spring and summer. Where and when Grant was bitten hasn’t been determined and likely never will.

At age 7, Grant contracted Lyme disease as a result of a tick bite when the family was camping during the Fourth of July in 2015. Grant became sick and continued to be sick throughout the entire holiday period. The amount of time for the symptoms to make themselves known varies from person to person, but the effects can be extremely serious.

“He was sick the whole holiday,” Kurowski said. “He kept spiking with high fevers, but we thought it was just some kind of summer bug of some sort.

When the family returned from the camping trip, Grant’s first stop was at an urgent-care clinic, but the diagnosis was simply that it was some sort of bug that was going around and it would go away, Kurowski said. There were no overt symptoms, only that he had a fever. After a week the fevers were still there every day, and every day he would be so tired.

“They (the fevers) would come and go every few days,” she said, “but when they came on they came on really hot. And he just slept and slept and slept.”

Extreme fatigue is one of the tell-tale symptoms of Lyme disease, but not the only one.

Eventually they called their pediatrician because Grant simply could not seem to kick the problems. Prior to seeing the pediatrician, Grant spent a weekend with his grandparents while the rest of the family went camping. That is when the tell-tale red bullseye ring started to appear. Grant’s Lyme disease was confirmed when he visited the pediatrician, and he was put on a regimen of antibiotics.

Because Grant was not an adult, finding the right dosage was more difficult. The fatigue continued for some time.

“Usually on the weekends, I just slept more,” Grant said. “I would go to bed at about five o’clock (at night) and sleep until seven the next morning.”

We would make sure to wake him about seven in the morning Kurowski added. Grant was sleeping about 14 hours a night and would have slept more if he hadn’t been awakened.

The antibiotics finally kicked in and helped to break the cycle of fevers and slowly he began to recover, but it was not immediate.

“It was about a year before Grant was back to his old self,” Kurowski said. “He was very skinny that summer and he had no appetite. He couldn’t make it through a whole soccer practice without lying on the grass to rest.”

So Grant headed back to school in the fall feeling less than energetic, but a chiropractor friend of Kurowski provided a new product named Biocidin to help alleviate the fatigue and a homeopathic treatment called Lymestat, which is supposed to kill the Lyme bacteria in the system.

While Kurowski couldn’t say for sure whether the Lyme bacteria in Grant’s system was destroyed, she is an enthusiastic supporter of the treatment.

“It made a huge difference with him even though they tasted terrible,” she said. “He knew they were making a difference, and he would ask for them at bedtime each night.”

It took six months until Grant showed signs of his old self, and a full year to complete recovery, but he fell in love with reading during that year and has become an avid reader of books at St. Francis Xavier School in Sartell.

While Grant had several of the classic symptoms of Lyme disease, Rebecca had few if any of the symptoms. She became aware of her own Lyme disease when she was pregnant with Grant’s older twin sisters. It was 2005, and Kurowski and her husband were living in Fargo at the time.

“When I was 32 weeks pregnant with the twins, I was out for dinner with my husband when the right side of my face started to collapse,” Kurowski said. “We went to the emergency room, and they (told us) ‘It is Bell’s Palsy and we don’t know what causes it.’”

The twins were OK and are healthy to this day, but after their delivery, Kurowski began to explore what was going on with her face. She visited neurologists, ear, nose-and-throat specialists and internal-medicine specialists.

“Nobody suspected Lyme disease – nobody even suspected that,” she said. “Their explanations were that maybe the babies had pinched a nerve, or who knows? It wasn’t life threatening so nobody was going to spend the time researching it. I even had one doctor who told me to ‘get over your vanity.’”

Kurowski said along with the collapse of the right side of her face, she experienced a good deal of pain. It also affected her hearing, which became very sensitive. She lost her squint reflex and the ability to blink or wink in her right eye. She began to explore natural treatments to see if there was some way to improve the situation. Medical doctors didn’t seem to have any answers for her.

In 2008, the Kurowski family moved to Sartell. It was here she visited the chiropractor who would later give her the homeopathic medicine for Grant. Her chiropractor inquired as to the cause of her facial issue and then suggested she try electro-dermal screening. It was through that method of diagnosis Kurowski found out she had Lyme disease. She visited a medical clinic shortly after that and had the diagnosis confirmed using the standard blood test for Lyme disease.

She returned to the chiropractor and started on a regimen of homeopathic drops called Lymestat and some mega doses of vitamins and followed the treatment for about a year. After a year, another EDS screening declared her free of Lyme disease.

“I went back to the lab – I was still a little skeptical, this was kind of uncharted territory for me – and sure enough, I tested positive for Lyme disease,” Kurowski said.

Being free of the Lyme disease did not restore normal elasticity to her face, so six months after being declared free of Lyme disease, she consulted a physician at Williams Integracare, who she said asked what seemed like a thousand questions.

“I hadn’t connected the idea of the Lyme disease with my facial collapse,” Kurowski said. “Suddenly, the physician said, ‘I’ve got it. We have to test you for Lyme disease.’”

The doctor explained she probably had Lyme disease for some time and that it was in a dormant state. Once she became pregnant, it compromised her system and the Lyme disease attacked the facial nerves, causing her face to collapse. It was the third time she had been diagnosed with Lyme disease.

She tried various treatments to see if there was some way to restore the elasticity, but none of it worked. While there has been some slight improvement, Kurowski has come to accept the facial collapse is something that just needs to be endured.

“The EDS practitioner said the Lyme had been in my system for many years and had been dormant deep in the tissue. She said I probably got bit as a child,” Kurowski explained. “There isn’t one standard answer to how it happens and how it affects everyone. For some people the symptoms are immediate – they develop the red ring and other classic telltale signs. It can hit people differently.”

Despite being afflicted with Lyme disease, the family still likes outdoor activities. They are just more cautious and do regular tick checks of one another. That’s the most important thing, Kurowski said.

“Just be aware that they (ticks) are out there and pay attention to symptoms,” she said.