Q.A.’s Commissioners issue Lyme Disease Awareness proclamation

Jun 19, 2007
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CENTREVILLE — The Queen Anne’s County Commissioners issued a proclamation June 5 calling for Lyme Disease Awareness. Commissioner Gene Ransom read the proclamation, which was accepted by Centreville resident Sandy Goettel, who has Lyme disease.

“At one point I was on 26 medications. Twenty six medications, because it affects so many systems of your body,” said Goettel.

Goettel said Lyme disease is a “lonely disease, because some symptoms aren’t readily visible. Her hands and fingers burned and tingled.

The disease affected her eyesight, and she couldn’t read. She’s able to walk unassisted, but a year ago she was using a walker. Goettel was a professor of English literature at Anne Arundel Community College.

Her illness kept her out of work for a year, and she recently lost her job. She’s unemployed and $70,000 in debt.

Lyme disease is controversial, said Goettel. She said some people think she suffers from the post-disease effects of Lyme.

Goettel said she has leraned a lot from her illness: courage, perseverance, and tolerance and compassion for others.

She moved from Annapolis to the Eastern Shore three years ago, and said her neighbors on the Shore have helped her much. Goettel said her hope is that people in the community become more aware about the dangers of Lyme disease.

According to the Lyme Disease Education and Support Groups of Maryland, Lyme disease is the most commonly reported vector borne disease in the United States. But it remains largely underreported and undiagnosed throughout Maryland, and nationally. Maryland is among the top 10 state for the highest Lyme disease rates in the country, and boasts the highest rate of new Lyme disease cases nationwide for the first few months of 2007.

Over the past two years, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene confirmed more than 2,200 new cases of Lyme disease in the state. According to the Centers for Disease Control’s 10-fold assessment, more than 22,000 Maryland residents were infected in just the past few years.

Lyme disease is caused by a spirochetal organism (Borrelia burgdorferi) similar to the one that causes syphilis.

Ticks are the most well known transmitters of the disease, however, less than 50 percent of people with Lyme disease recall a tick bite.

There are more than 300 known strains of Borrelia and at least three different forms of the organism which are virtually undetectable in humans using current standard lab testing methods.

Early symptoms of Lyme disease can be intermittent and changing if they appear at all.

Neurological disorders, rheumatological syndromes, and cardiac problems can occur in varying combinations over months to years.

The most obvious sign of early Lyme disease is the erythema migrans skin rash, but it occurs in less than 50 percent of adult patients and less than 10 percent of children.

Early symptoms may include malaise, fatigue, fever, headache, stiff neck, myalgias, arthralgias and/or lymphadenopathy.

Symptoms can fluctuate, remit or they may become chronic and debilitating.

https://www.stardem.com/news/article_3259d04e-957a-5523-aee9-e942c42a77d7.html