Dr. Nasr in Calvert County LLMD Passed Away
The Gazette
Friday, January 09, 2015
Calvert doctor’s unexpected death leaves Lyme patients in the dark
Clients say physician made all the difference in disease’s care
By Sara Newman Staff Writer
Photo submitted by Nicole Bowen
Dr. Rafik Yousri Aboul-Nasr was a board-certified primary care physician in Calvert County for more than 20 years and was the owner and founder of Heaven & Earth Medi Spa and Laser Center, where many of his patients suffering from Lyme disease received treatment. Nasr died unexpectedly Dec. 21, leaving some of his patients apprehensive as to where to go for treatment.
Susan Supplee was perplexed when she turned 30 and her health started suffering quickly. She saw a dozen different doctors, who diagnosed her with rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and tested her for HIV, diabetes, lupus and anxiety, but her poor immune system was still a mystery.
It wasn’t until Supplee followed a friend’s advice and saw a doctor based in Lusby who was known for treating his patients with herbal remedies and alternative practices that she began to feel better.
“My experience with Dr. Nasr was that he was the first person to recognize the fact that I had Lyme disease, even though I had years’ worth of negative Lyme tests,” Supplee said.
Supplee, of California, Md., believes she contracted the disease when she was 19, when her immune system initially crashed. Despite years of blood tests coming back negative for the disease, it took 13 years for a positive test to come back and an alternative medicine practitioner to know how to treat it.
Supplee’s doctor, Rafik Yousri Aboul-Nasr, died unexpectedly Dec. 21 of unknown causes. He was a board-certified primary care physician in Calvert County for more than 20 years, and was the owner and founder of Heaven & Earth Medi Spa and Laser Center, where many of his Lyme disease patients received treatment.
Since his death, his daughter, Celia Nasr, is now the owner of the medi spa and his private practice has merged with Calvert Physician Associates. Though the medi spa is able to function providing facials, massages and spa treatments, a new medical director, acupuncturist and holistic therapist is needed to perform all that Nasr did, according to the spa’s manager, Nicole Bowen.
“He was a great practitioner and a great friend,” Bowen said. “There was not another practitioner in this area, in Southern Maryland, that really knows about Lyme and has experience with it. He started in his family practice and eventually branched out because his patient load got so huge he needed more space to practice with herbs and natural therapy.”
The tick-borne disease is found throughout Southern Maryland, and Maryland has one of the highest rates of Lyme disease in the nation, according to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Most cases of Lyme disease can be cured with antibiotics if treatment is started early, according to information from Calvert Memorial Hospital. If untreated, the disease may spread within a few days to weeks and may cause a loss of muscle tone, severe headaches and neck stiffness, shooting pains, heart palpitations, dizziness and joint pain, among other ailments.
By the time Supplee received her diagnosis, she had two children and discovered she passed the disease onto them. Her two sons, ages 14 and 9, suffered from chronic headaches and pain in the lymph nodes behind her younger son’s knees. Many of her children’s doctors wrote their ailments off as growing pains that would eventually subside.
Today, her symptoms and her sons’ symptoms are in remission thanks to the “aggressive” antibiotic treatment she used. With the knowledge she has gained of the disease to help herself and her children, Supplee said many people contact her for help and recommendations of which doctors to see and what medicines to take.
“I always sent them to Dr. Nasr for testing because I knew he was one of the rare doctors that would look beyond one portion of the testing and put the different pieces together,” Supplee said. “… It scares me that I don’t know of an option in this area to refer friends to for testing when they’re facing those serious health symptoms. … I took for granted that when doctors said I didn’t have Lyme, and if I did the antibiotics would have taken care of it, so everything else you’re feeling is just in your head.”
Dana Briscoe, of St. Mary’s County, who saw Nasr as her primary care physician and at the medi spa, said he “listened more than he talked” and made his patients feel cared for.
Briscoe, who believes she contracted the disease from a tick bite in 2008, had similar interactions with many other doctors who didn’t believe her symptoms or thought seeing a psychiatrist would be appropriate treatment.
“The typical Lyme patient goes to like 50 doctors before you can find someone who is Lyme literate,” Briscoe said. “… The relief I got was within 24 hours of seeing Dr. Nasr.”
Disparities in treatment for the disease stem from two different schools of thought, including whether chronic Lyme actually exists and administering individualized treatment to patients. Difficulties with insurance companies also limit what doctors and patients can afford to do. Because of the controversy in treating the disease, some doctors will not advertise themselves as being Lyme literate or specializing in treating the disease, which leaves Lyme patients, like Nasr’s, in the dark.
“I made calls to other doctors in the county who could treat Lyme but weren’t accepting new patients,” Briscoe said. “… This is very devastating to lose him. I’m sure to his family, and definitely his employees, but his Lyme patients … it’s horrible.”
“The hard part is getting a diagnosis so the insurance companies will pay for your treatment you need, and understanding the other problems and why the Lyme is so effective,” Maryellen Lyons, another former patient of Nasr’s, said.
Like Supplee, Lyons, a Leonardtown resident, has been suffering from effects of the disease for more than 10 years and unknowingly passed it onto her two children.
“He just really nailed what I had been going through and he had a really good sense of how the body worked and a lot of knowledge of how the body worked,” Lyons said of Nasr. “It was just such a relief when I found him, to finally have a doctor who didn’t tell me it was in my head but had a treatment to get me to a better level of functioning.”
Currently, Bowen said she is not referring Nasr’s Lyme patients to any other doctors or specialists in the area.
Supplee and Lyons currently see doctors in Arlington, Va., and Washington, D.C., but know not all Lyme disease patients in Southern Maryland are able to travel to or afford other doctors.
“If [Dr. Nasr] hadn’t pointed out that Lyme was one of the underlying conditions with my health, I would have continued to accept the diagnosis of fibromyalgia,” Supplee said, “and I probably would have
ended up bed-ridden at this point, if not dead.”