Before my son Max was diagnosed with PANDAS this past year, I had come to believe that this was my Max. This anxiety and OCD and restricted eating and insomnia and meltdowns. I did not realize he was in the belly of the Bear. I had made myself forget who Max really was, the Max that was taken from us eight years ago. I told myself a story that surely he had always been this way. This was who he was, who he'd always been and always would be (an anxious PANDAS world without end

"I've also lost a son. Nothing compares to what some people in this room are going through. And as bad as losing a son is, you parents, some of you, are having to endure far worse suffering." -Dr. Paul Hardy, 2014 New England PANS/PANDAS Association conference Our son Max served as cantor for the first time last week. I shut down the urgent care I'm working at part time early that night to make it in time to see him. He sang beautifully. I'm not just saying that as his mother