LYME GUIDELINES ARE CRUEL!

• It is inexplicable and has no reasonable excuse that "serious" organizations, government oriented say that Lyme disease and its co-infections should be treated with just two, maximum four weeks of antibiotics, like Doxiciline. This is cruel and has no real medical basis. Tick borne infected people need longer and proper treatments to recover a healthy life.
• How can this so called serious organizations proclaim such treatment (s) knowing that it doesn't kill the bacteria nor the parasites that result from the tick borne infection? Because they do know the bacteria is not killed, murdered, expelled or dead after such short treatments they recommend; or can they dare to say that the bug is completely eradicated and the sufferings of the patient are gone after following their guidelines?
• I dare to make a bet to see if they are right stating that the bacteria is gone, by making lab tests with this laboratory in Central Florida who is now - finally- detecting the bacteria itself, not like the other labs that just detect the reaction of the body to the bacteria.
• You, huge organizations, do you dare to test patients treated, based on your poor guidelines, and then test them to see if they have the bacteria, parasites, protozoans and microorganisms alive? I bet what is left of my health to prove they are still alive and creating colonies inside muscles, tendons, bones, organs, glands and brain of the patients; prove me wrong, please!!!
• So now, after your recommended treatment, because it doesn't really trully completely work, you call "Chronic Lyme" the persisting symtptoms of the patient? "Chronic" meaning, suffering for life and never going to be cured? Is this your excuse after neglecting that the treatment is not complete, is not correct, is not healing?
• Oh, excuse me, now it is not called "chronic" but "Post-Lyme", and it means the same: "suffering for life and never going to be cured?"
• Chronic or post-Lyme, which ever you prefer. Truly meaning negligence in trying harder to find a cure; avoiding spending money in lab tests and medicines at the expense of huge suffering from the tick borne infected people and their families. Even punishing Doctors who have given longer treatments because it cost more money to the insurance; wow, absolute evil!
• Because, if we won't be suffering, if we were there just living like vegetables, you could be there believing that your guidelines are good because they work fine for you and your insurances; but not, you have huge responsibility pending over your heads; every minute we suffer is your accountability!
• We are pouring pain every minute you don't treat us properly and the truth will arise and this negligence will be known and the world would judge.
• Some day the medicine will take care of us, long term Lyme sufferers, beyond the limits of your short guidelines! Because at the end, life is always fair!
• I BELIEVE!

LYME, LIKE IF I'VE WON THE LOTTERY!

• Lyme is considered the number ONE tick borne illness of the US, but no one has heard about it, and I got it, wow!

• And it is established that it is located in the North East Coast of the US; I have never moved out from Florida during 10 years I’ve lived in this Country except for last month when finally went to Maryland to see the Doctor that could test me to see if I got the illness.

• In some cases, Lyme can be a mild illness, and people could have it for years without knowing they’re infected; not me, it has been horrible since day one and has not stopped being painful hard during almost three years.

• Suffering from Lyme Disease is about having to fight or surrender under the domain of a bacteria transmitted by a tick; the bacteria is known as Borrelia Burgdorferi. It causes symptoms like malaria, meaning kind of flu pains all over the body and in the bad cases the problems spread to the joints, muscles, heart and central nervous system; wow, lucky me the one I got is the very bad version!

• But this is just the beginning… The tiny ticks pass not only the Borelia, but other co-infections which are other bacteria or parasites or protozoan; guess what, I also got one called Babesia, also called "The Malaria of The Northeast," which, as the second name indicates, generates “malaria like symptoms”, meaning, if one is not enough I got two of the same type just to make sure!

• But, of course, if Lyme sounds bad, Babesia is the “fierce” of the family; its symptoms are extremely stronger and faster! It is “thought to be the second most common blood parasites of mammals”, so I got the first and second most common dangerous illnesses transmitted by bugs in the US; that is something ah? More, considering that I came from a “third world country” that has tropical illnesses, and that twenty years ago I lived during two years in a region in the middle of the jungle, at the Pacific Coast of Colombia, considered one of the most endemic zones of malaria of the world, and never, ever got any illness…

• So, coming to the US to get a stronger and more sophisticated type of malaria like illness, (in fact two different ones), much more difficult to eradicate, not well known and in most cases dismissed by medical personnel is really a unique weird “winning” situation.

• And it is officially said: “The number of symptoms and duration of illness in patients with concurrent Lyme disease and babesiosis are greater than in patients with either infection alone”; as I said, got two for the price of one!

• But when I win, I win big! The tinny tick also gave me two more types of “pathogens” or protozoan or, calls them bugs, which the lab could not identify but who are inundating my blood and who knows the harm they’re doing there…

• My recently acquired expert Doctor says Babesia appears as a co-infection in many Lyme infected patients; but the book reads that it will “always be a mild case unless the person had their spleen removed surgically” … what? I didn’t! And it is certainly not mild!

• It also reads: “severe cases are also more likely to occur in the very young, very old and persons with immunodeficiency”; I’m not any of those nor have HIV or had any other type of illness!

• And the last more funny excerption of Babesia: “Babesiosis develops only in patients who live in or travel to an endemic area or receive a contaminated blood transfusion”... so, I never got a blood transfusion, have not traveled anywhere different from Central Florida or Miami which leads to saying that this might be “an endemic area” ??? No way! Disney doesn’t have dangerous bugs, just nice mice that sing and play all day!

• “The health officials say that Babesia Microti is the most common strain on the East coast.

• Babesia Duncani is only supposed to exist on the West coast.” Really? I got the one of the West Coast, how did it travel to Florida?

• “Babesiosis in humans is characterized by anorexia, fatigue, fever, sweating, and generalized myalgia”; I have increased smell and lost of taste due to the Lyme and add the anorexia with the Babesia; a double win? More over if I had gained thirty pounds when I never changed my weight in more than 40 years plus I’m barely eating a little meal once a day!

• “The best way to find out if you have Lyme disease is to talk to your family doctor about your symptoms. Blood tests aren't always necessary to make the diagnosis”. Can I “LOL”? Saw seven Doctors, some family Doctors, other specialized in the Heart, or the Endocrine System and even an “Infectious Disease Specialist” who said Lyme didn’t exist in Florida, so, no one diagnosing me correctly was just “lucks”?

• “A relatively recently described babesial parasite, the WA1-type, has been shown to be the causative agent in seven human cases in the western US. This parasite is closely related to babesial parasites isolated from large wild ungulates in California. Isolated cases of human babesisosis have been described in Africa and Mexico, but the causative parasites were not well characterized.” The WA1 type is the one I “won”… I’m in Florida, Central Florida, not California or Africa! Other writings talk about China, Egypt and Taiwan; may be I got the tick from something I bought from the dollar store?

• Now what? I have no way to convince these Gringos that they have a really endemic, dangerous, painful illness disseminated in their whole country. I got LYME DISEASE and have to suffer the worst strain of it without any hope ahead, just supported by my family who are surprised to see this type of situation could occur in the so called “the most powerful country of the planet”. We have better medical attention even in the smallest poor village of our miserable third world class country. They know what malaria is, they have the medicine to treat it and they cure it. The government takes measures to prevent the illness and to stop any possible dissemination over the other regions or the world. That is not seen here with their endemic illness; and for what I have read, England and the other European Countries are also trying to cover the sun with their fingers ignoring the severity of the illness; but later on they all will know they had generated a pandemic due to the lack of attention and proper care. Canada and some regions of Germany are trying to work their part, God bless them!

• Note 1: Please excuse my irony, it is my way today of expressing my frustration. I am now having an amazing Doctor who is taking good care of me and his 75 patients a week; I am thankful. I hope I can open the eyes of some others that don’t know about this!

• Note 2: As a Social Communicator and Journalist I can present documentary proof of what I say here and of my medical history.

SAW THE DOCTOR, GOT CURED!

SAW THE DOCTOR, GOT CURED!

• Nothing cures more than learning that someone is willing to help you to the best of their knowledge! Your mind is prepared to participate in the process of healing the body; it’s a particular positive situation. Everyone tries their best and things go as they should. “It is called the placebo effect; people have confidence in Doctors, they have confidence in diagnoses, confidence in medicine. Sometimes they get a little better because they think they will” (from the TV series “House”). I think this attention that generates the confidence is the minimum any person should get when sick, and moreover when this person is paying to receive the medical service; but, sorry to say, that is not always the case!

• So, the other side is that there’s nothing more painful than being sick and not receiving the proper medical help! Many, many people, especially in the US, probably agree with me; and from those, many are multi-symptomatic patients whom “their Doctors” left alone usually classifying them as patients with mental problems. Me, being one of those, with no major problem than 21 symptoms, in my “reduced medical history version”, not being classified as crazy, but yes, as first having a Thyroiditis, then an allergy and later on with maybe a bronchitis, or a virus or “something not known yet”, felt alone, abandoned to my luck in my own painful situation. No misery could be described worst than no one willing to help you when you need it the most! Then they wonder why the patient got depressed?

• So, after months and interminable days of uncertainty, of abandonment and lack of hope, a light shows at the end of my tunnel. It was a blog written by a Doctor in Montgomery County, Maryland, who is not afraid of treating them when they have multiple complicated, painful, sometimes weird symptoms. Just that blog raised my spirit. That blog gave me hope and made me fight for a better treatment and wellbeing. I felt I deserved to be helped and not be ignored. I gained some confidence believing that I might even deserve to get cured and I probably still don’t have to die in pain, ignored by the medical personnel. So I read the blog and found that bacteria, parasites and different types of microorganisms can generate multiple symptoms. Also learned that these bugs might be so strong that to combat them might be needed not one, but multiple antibiotics administered during longer periods of time. This knowledge was the beginning of my long intent to a healing journey. I had the invaluable support of a Doctor who lives in my home country in South America and with him I started antibiotics treatments that little by little made me taste a bit of a great healing process.

• But that’s not all. I recently traveled through 7 states and went to see this Doctor in Maryland; and it was what I expected it to be, even better! He heard all my stories – asked me if I had a short version, lol! – and didn’t care of how hyper I was, nor if I looked nervous or “anxious”; he just listened with an open mind and after one hour of conversations , without judging me, he end up saying: “I’ll help you”. I really wanted to cry, this time of happiness. The “Tears of Joy” this Doctor describes in one of his blogs, were mine this time. Not because I was healed already, not because the Doctor had already figured out which was my problem; nor even because I knew if I could get cured; but just knowing that he had the will, the intention, and the heart to see what could be done for me, to look the possible causes of my illness, was much more than what I had received from 4 Doctors I had seen before. During this visit, internally, mentally, I got cured because I saw the possibility of getting better when before there was no hope. I felt stronger as someone that has a support to hold you until you can walk on your own. I know I am not surrendering for nothing less than better days and nights and I believe that I can not only get better but I can also help others, supporting them in their healing process.

• Yes, from the thorn the rose. Let’s build a group of patients that deserve to receive proper careful treatment; I’m signing first!

Thank you Montgomery Doctor, and special thanks to his staff who cared for me as if I were a close friend or relative; love you all!