Googling: "Is my kid
bipolar?"

I have two little kids with PANS/PANDAS. My son is 8. My daughter is 6. He showed his first signs at 3.5 years old. She was only 20 months.

For years, we were gaslit, dismissed, and left to figure it out on our own. We tried everything. We lived in near-constant crisis, one of them spiraling, the other one starting, sometimes both at once, and for a long time I suspected PANS/PANDAS but we were dismissed, repeatedly, and that diagnosis didn't come until May of 2025.

When it did, and when treatment started for their underlying infections, something happened I hadn't felt in so long I'd almost forgotten what it felt like. I had my kids back; and sadly, it was like seeing them for the first time. Actually back. Present, reachable, themselves. It was heartbreaking for all the time we'd lost and hopeful in a way that made me afraid to breathe too hard in case it disappeared.

And then it disappeared.

Not all at once. But we kept cycling back. There was never enough time at that place where they were calm and regulated and joyful, zesty for life, silly, quite frankly just kids, the way you'd expect little kids to be in the world. It never held. The flaring always came back and baseline stayed just out of reach, something we visited for a moment, or hours, but never got to keep.

We were treating the infections. We were treating the inflammation. We were doing everything we were supposed to do and still my babies were stuck, still the world felt like imminent peril to them every single day. I knew they were in there behind the flare, I just didn't know why I couldn't get to them.

I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. But I am a mom who is unwilling to accept that this was just how it was going to be. So I did what I do. I tracked everything. Every symptom, every day, in a journal and then a spreadsheet that got more detailed and color-coded and pattern-mapped the longer I couldn't find the answer anywhere else.

Then one day in March of 2026, I read an article about cerebral folate deficiency. And something shifted in my chest before I even finished it.

We already knew my son had high folate needs. His nutrient panel from his first severe flare had shown that, along with deficiencies in nearly every other nutrient the brain needs to function. We had MTHFR and COMT mutations in the picture. We were already supplementing with folinic acid. So we raised the dose, carefully, just to see if there was a response.

That was the holy sh*t moment. And I haven't hopped out of that rabbit hole since, because what I found in there changed the way I understand everything about what is happening to my kids. And the thing that stopped me completely cold, the symptoms of B12 deficiency, folate deficiency, iron deficiency in the brain look nearly identical to PANS.

I don't know yet. But I built this because I couldn't find anyone else asking the question. And if there's even a chance that this information could help another family find their way out of this hell, another parent finally get their kid back, then I owe it to every one of you to put it out there.

So between detailed daily tracking, spreadsheet checklists of meds, and navigating everything else life has thrown at me, I built The Starving Brain to share what I have learned.