In 2002, Danna Pristach took her 12-year-old son to the doctor after a tick bit him while he was playing flashlight tag in the neighborhood. He tested positive for Lyme disease and was given a two-week course of antibiotics, and the family assumed that would be the end of it.
Now 19, Peter Pristach spends most of his days sitting in an oversized beanbag chair in the family’s Centreville living room. He has had to delay finishing high school at a point when most of his former classmates from Westfield High School are getting ready to begin college.