Lyme Patients Protest the Orlando Sentinel
January 17, 2011- The Orlando Sentinel re-printed a tabloid-like article originally published in the Chicago Tribune. Patients took a stand and protested the bad move by the Orlando paper. See more information here.
http://www.lymedisease.org/news/touchedbylyme/628.html
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Doctors often mistake Lyme for other diseases
Living with Lyme disease today is like living with AIDS in the 1980s. Many doctors are inadequately educated about Lyme, and they look to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Infectious Diseases Society of America for their education.
Testing for Lyme — which mimics hundreds of diseases — often is not always accurate in the early stages. And the bulls-eye rash, a common symptom, does not always appear. Hence, many cases of Lyme go undetected at their earliest and most-treatable point.
Patients often are misdiagnosed and treated for some other identifiable diseases such as Parkinson's or dementia. Doctors are quick to treat these symptoms, which mask the underlying problem — Lyme spirochetes and their co-infections.
Lyme exists in a biofilm, which coats the bacteria and makes treatment ineffective. Antibiotics may kill some of the Lyme, but Lyme cocoons in the biofilm and will attack again. Doctors will not treat the disease long enough or retest their "cured" patients; "cured" patients fall harder to the subsequent onslaught from the resurgent Lyme spirochete.
I am proof of this. I was gravely ill two years ago. But today I am living a good life, thanks to one of the doctors who was mischaracterized in the Orlando Sentinel article "A dubious diagnosis" on Dec. 20.
There are millions of us in the U.S. dying from misdiagnosis and ineffective medical care. This, plus the fact that the very few good doctors are being assailed by the system, is a sad testimony to the state of Lyme treatment today.
Allison Caruana Windermere