Lyme health

I just watched a documentary about Lyme Disease. It's titled "Under Our Skin," director Andy Abrahams Wilson. It left me crying in anger and frustration. It left me feeling helpless. Then I remembered that I have a blog. So, here it is.

I have mentioned on the blog that last year I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. When I went to the doctor, one of my knees was swollen to twice the size of the other. It took more than a month to recover normal function in that leg. Motion in my right arm was so restricted that I couldn't reach up and put my hair in a ponytail. I had a severe episode of vertigo, at home, alone with my daughter that scared me like nothing else in this life. I had bite my lips and stand next to the stove boiling pasta and fixating my eyes into one point, because if I lost a bit of control, I would have crashed on the floor and probably psychologically scarred my daughter seriously. I underwent an antibiotic treatment for two weeks and felt much better. When I asked my doctor what if I get these symptoms again, what then, because I had been feeling sick for about a year before going to see him, he said it was impossible. Lyme gets treated easily with antibiotics. If symptoms reoccur, it means it is a new infection, a new tick. I view of all the testimonies on the Internet from long-time sufferers of chronic Lyme disease, that seemed hard to believe. But I preferred to trust him, because it was easier, more comfortable.

First let me say that I do not have any symptoms that would lead me to believe I've still got Lyme. Let me also add that I do not feel 100 percent healthy. I do not feel like before. But, as they say in the medical documentation for Lyme, this can be blamed on the aches and pains of daily living.

I watched however this documentary about people who struggled much more than I did and about the doctors who tried to help them, only to be shut down by a medical system that seems to have taken the road of perdition.

It seems that in the 1980's, legislation allowed universities and researchers to patent, own and profit from their research. Which seems a laudable measure at first sight. As a result, however, researchers (who work hard and I admire them, and I agree they deserve compensation for their hard work and amazing breakthroughs) instead of disseminating the truth, chose to keep it under wraps for possible profit opportunities.

Most of the doctors from the Infectious Disease Association of America who wrote the guidelines for the treatment of Lyme disease (line in: it's only an acute infection, never chronic, and it gets treated with antibiotic treatment of two to four weeks) have to profit monetarily in one or multiple ways from the information they have. They are trusted however, to write guidelines that allow patients to basically die from Lyme disease because doctors refuse to treat them, to believe them and instead send them for psychiatric evaluation.

Lyme disease is a weird bacterial infection, from the same family as the syphilis bacteria. The Lyme bacteria was discovered relatively recently, but most doctors believe they have complete knowledge of it. Although the symptoms look alarmingly similar to those of diseases that the doctors know nothing about, like multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia. The little bug is also linked to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. I have ceased long time ago to trust those who believe they are in possession of the ultimate truth. There is no such thing.

Thanks to the Internet, who has been nothing less than a miracle for disseminating information, we know that there are numerous people out there whose Lyme was never cured. There are people who have died of Lyme disease. And yet my doctor assured me that Lyme is very easy to treat. And if I still had symptoms today, he probably wouldn't do anything about it. Why would he? His books show clearly that Lyme is treatable and besides, even if he tried to treat further, he would probably lose his license or be sued by the insurance company.

This story reminds me that science does not have all the answers, that the answers that it does have might very well be proven wrong at any time in the future. It also reminds me that while we all deserve to make a living from our work, maybe there is something not quite right about all of us looking to make a killing. Because, what happens to our ethics then? I don't know the answers. But then again, no one does.