Re: Scott Brazil dies from Lyme Disease Complications etc.

Here's some more proof. Fave is shortened version which is used many
times on usenet. No I don't say it out loud.
pissant all the time or just on usenet?


http://www.newstimes.com/cgi-bin/dbs.cgi?db=news&view_records=1&id=50098

Patients grapple with Lyme disease

By Robert Miller THE NEWS-TIMES 2003-05-12

NEW MILFORD - In 2001, doctors told Tony Coffey he had a form of
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease - and gave
him a few months to live.
His steps were faltering, his speech slurred. He couldn't swallow his
own saliva, let alone food. He had Bell's palsy, causing his facial
muscles to droop.
"I couldn't cough or laugh,'' said Coffey of Fredericks County, Penn.
who celebrated his 37th birthday Saturday at a symposium on Lyme
disease at New Milford High School. "And I had what I can only describe
as a constant pressure on my brain. I think my doctors thought I was
faking it, or losing my mind.''
Coffey was lucky. His search for medical help took him to Dr. Gregory
Bach, a Pennsylvania doctor who specializes in treating Lyme disease.
Thanks to intensive, long-term regime of antibiotics, Coffey has
recovered his health. He has a new son, named Gregory after Bach.
"I'm happy every day of my life,'' he said. "I'm just so grateful to be
liberated from the hell of Lyme disease.''
Bach, Coffey and several other doctors spoke to more than 200 people at
the symposium, which was organized by Karen Kopins Shaw of Litchfield.
The repeated message of the day was that Lyme disease manifests itself
in many ways, making its diagnosis a difficult thing.
"We have to think outside the box,'' said Bach, who plans to build a
research hospital in Pennsylvania dedicated to studying tick-borne
diseases. "ALS, multiple sclerosis - all are getting mixed up with Lyme
disease.''
Echoing Bach's words. Dr. Steven Phillips of Ridgefield said his
research into Lyme has found links between infections with Borrelia
burgdorferi -the spirochetal bacteria that causes the disease - and
autoimmune disease like multiple sclerosis, lupus and rheumatoid
arthritis.
"Doctors have called MS an autoimmune disease, and said people who get
it have a genetic predisposition for it,'' said Phillips. "But it's not
just genetic. For a long time, they've thought there was an infectious
agent involved.''
While studies have drawn a blank between MS and viruses and airborne
bacteria, Phillips said he and other researchers are now showing that
many MS patients have also been infected with the Lyme bacteria,
finding bacterial cysts in their spinal fluid.
Phillips' presentation also showed one reason why the bacteria is so
hard to detect once it infects a human. To protect itself, the
corkscrew-shaped bacteria can convert itself into a round microscopic
cyst - "like it's eating its own tail,'' Philips said. As a cyst, it
can hide out in cells where it's harder for antibiotics to reach. At a
later date, it can turn itself back into a spirochete.
"That's why the tests for Lyme are so often wrong,'' Phillips said.
"They're looking for the proteins associated with the spirochete when
it's a cyst.''
Lyme disease is the country's leading tick-borne disease and
Connecticut has the highest per-capita rate of Lyme disease infection
in the United States.
People get Lyme disease when they're bitten by a black-legged tick -
a.k.a. the deer tick - which carries Borrelia burgdorferi in its gut.
If the tick stays attached for a day or two, the bacteria moves from
the tick into the human; because the tick, in its nymphal stage, is as
tiny as a poppy seed, people don't always realize they been bitten.
Once bitten, most people - but not all - get an expanding rash around
the tick bite, accompanied by a fever, headache and stiff joints. If
they take antibiotics as soon as these symptoms show up, they're
usually cured without and further repercussions.
For those who don't get treated right away - and even for some who do -
the Lyme infection can show up months later with much more severe
symptoms, including painful and swollen joints, heart disease and
neurological problems.
Dr. Bernard Raxlen, a Greenwich psychiatrist who has treated the
psychological problems the disease can cause, said he's seen many
patients with "brain fog.'' - a general mental wooliness that prevents
them from carrying out tasks they could have knocked off it s a few
minutes prior to infection.
"I've seen patients with severe hyper-sensitivity,'' he said. "Lights
bother their eyes, noises bother their hearing. They have spatial
disabilities - they find themselves getting lost in their own home
towns. They have language problems - they start using the word 'thing'
a lot instead of all the nouns they've lost.''
"And I've seen spontaneous rage, depression, severe anxiety and panic
attacks - all from people who were doing very well a few weeks
before.''
What's frustrating to doctors who treat Lyme patients is that there's
not one good laboratory tests that can identify the disease. Phillips
said it's hard to culture the bacteria taken from the body. Other blood
tests - which detect the presence of the disease by the
infection-fighting antibodies it produces - are widely recognized as
unreliable.
"If you think you have Lyme disease, and your doctor takes one blood
test and says you don't without looking at your clinical symptoms,
immediately run to another doctors,'' Raxlen said.
A tick bite can cause other infections diseases - babesiosis,
ehrlichiosis, bartonella People can sometimes get infected with more
than one disease from a single bite.
The difficulties in diagnosing Lyme disease has opened a sometimes
bitter split in the medical community about it. Some doctors believe
people should get two months of antibiotics at most for the disease;
others, including those at the symposium, have kept their patients on
antibiotics - both oral and intravenous - for a year or longer.
The first camp also question many clinical diagnoses now being made,
claiming people with a host of problems - anything from undefined aches
and pains, to chronic fatigue, to fibromyalgia, to depression - have
persuaded themselves erroneously that they have Lyme and are being
mistreated by doctors who support that diagnosis. The Lyme
disease-friendly doctors say, in reply, the disease has a bewildering
array of symptoms which should not be ignored or dismissed.
Jerri-Lynn Wier, an attorney from Pennsylvania who has worked on behalf
of the Lyme community, said doctors have had their records seized and
their licenses threatened because they've treat Lyme patients
aggressively with antibiotics. Because of such incidents, she warned
these doctors to carefully abide by the new HIPAA regulations dealing
with patient privacy.
"I'd urge you to follow them scrupulously, she said. "They'd be an easy
way for others to attack you.''
Dr. Amiram Katz, a Southport neurologist said Lyme-friendly doctors
must also fastidiously rule out any other illnesses before making a
diagnosis of Lyme.
"Our role is to ask first 'What else could this be,' '' he said. "We
should wake up every morning thinking of other diseases instead of Lyme
disease. We have to be careful. Misdiagnosis can run both ways and it's
dangerous both ways.''
Contact Robert Miller
at bmiller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
or at (203) 731-3345.
Division of Ottaway Newspapers,Inc.
333 Main St. Danbury, CT 06810 (203) 744-5100
copyright © 2001 by The News-Times
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