Hi all....I haven't been on here for a while but have some info I wanted to pass along.

First of all, I do have an anxiety disorder (GAD) but this is what happened to me ON TOP of that.

The daily anxiety that I was dealing with became worse for no reason. I developed OCD and a high level of fear---of everything. I was afraid to wash dishes, afraid to drive the car, afraid to take a shower, afraid to go to the market, afraid of a lamp on a table or even going to bed. It got to the point where I was terrified of everything imaginable. At times I felt like I was losing my mind. I had this boiling rage that I tried to keep under control. I became super-sensitive to anything anyone said, often being reduced to tears. I kept thinking I was going to end up institutionalized. This went on for about 2 years and how I managed to keep a lid on it, I'll never know.

I began to have pain that felt like was behind my eyes. I got suspicious and thought there's got to be something else going on here. I started taking my temperature daily. I always had a low-grade fever.

Having had Lyme years ago, I figured that it had resurfaced or I somehow got a new infection. I contacted my Lyme specialist and got tested for that and the other co-infections. The only one that came back positive was a high level of Bartonella Henselae which is cat scratch fever. My titer was off the scale. The bacteria had gotten into my central nervous system and brain!!!

We do have a cat and my cat did bite me during play. It was a deep bite on the back of my hand. I do not recall due to the passage of time how long this happened before the anxiety got much worse.

But for anyone who has a cat or dog, this is a real possibility. Typical symptoms are swollen lymph nodes, etc. but it can bypass all that like it did for me.

I told my primary about all this and he was very interested. He said, you know, you would have never gotten diagnosed with this even if you'd gone to an infectious disease specialist. But having Lyme years prior, I did have some knowledge of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. That's how I got lucky and figured it out.

The irrational fear is gone as well as the fevers and OCD and now I'm back down to my 'normal' and yes miserable level of anxiety.