Lyme Quotes

You can't teach calculus to a chimpanzee. So just share your banana.

You can't believe that AIDS is a curse from God against Gays without accepting that Lyme Disease is a curse from the same God against Deer Hunters...

spent much of my life in Lyme with my eyes fixed to the ground in search of fossils. Such hunting can limit a person’s perspective.

For myself, it took only the early discovery of a golden ammonite, glittering on the beach between Lyme and Charmouth, for me to succumb to the seductive thrill of finding unexpected treasure.

When the evening was over, Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme, to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

We had not meant our choice to cut us off from our past, but it did. We had only the present and the future to think of in Lyme.

What do you believe, Aunt Elizabeth?' 'I believe. . . I am comfortable with reading the Bible figuratively rather than literally. For instance, I think the six days in Genesis are not literal days, but different periods of creation, so that it took many thousands --- or hundreds of thousands of years --- to create. It does not demean God; it simply gives Him more time to build this extraordinary world.' 'And the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus?' 'They are creatures from long, long ago. They remind us that the world is changing. Of course it is. I can see it change when there are landslips at Lyme that alter the shoreline. It changes when there are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and floods. And why shouldn't it?

The sea-lentils tied to giant serpentine string beans, sea-liquor brine, sea-lyme grass, sea-moss, sea-cucumbers. He never knew the sea had such a lavish garden—sea-plumes, sea-grapes, sea-lungs. […] The sky put on its own evanescent spectacles, a pivoting stage, fugitive curtains, decors for ballets, floating icebergs, unrolled bolts of chiffon, gold and pearl necklaces, marabous of oyster white, scarves of Indian saris, flying feathers, shorn lambs, geometric architecture in snows and cotton. His theater was the clouds, where no spectacle repeated itself.

This was the sort of situation that she read about in the novels she favored, by authors such as Miss Jane Austen, whom Margaret was sure she’d met long ago at the Assembly Rooms the first time we visited Lyme. One of Miss Austen’s books had even featured Lyme Regis, but I did not read fiction and could not be persuaded to try it. Life itself was far messier and didn’t end so tidily with the heroine making the right match. We Philpot sisters were the very embodiment of that frayed life. I did not need novels to remind me of what I had missed.

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.

Although the first known human cases in the United States appeared only as recently as 1962, Lyme disease is already reaching epidemic proportions in many parts of our country.

I am Mrs. Poulteney. I have come to take up residence. Kindly inform your Master." "His Infinitude has been informed of your decease, ma'am. His angels have already sung a Jubilate in celebration of the event." "That is most proper and kind of Him." And the worthy lady, pluming and swelling, made to sweep into the imposing white hall she saw beyond the butler's head. But the man did not move aside. Instead, he rather impertinently jangled some keys he chanced to have in his hand. "My man! Make way. I am she. Mrs. Poulteney of Lyme Regis." "Formerly of Lyme Regis, ma'am. And now of a much more tropical abode." With that, the brutal flunkey slammed the door in her face.

marry. Fanny was having all the time what I experienced only the once with Colonel Birch in the orchard. I had my fame to comfort me, and the money it brought in, but that only went so far. I could not hate Fanny, for it were my fault she was crippled. But I could not ever feel friendly towards her nor comfortable round her. That was the case with many people in Lyme. I had come unstuck. I would never be a lady like the Philpots—no one would ever call me Miss Mary. I would be plain Mary Anning. Yet

It is no coincidence then that doctors and patients and the entire Lyme community report—anecdotally, of course, as there is still a frustrating scarcity of good data on anything Lyme-related—that women suffer the most from Lyme. They tend to advance into chronic and late-stage forms of the illness most because often it's checked for last, as doctors often treat them as psychiatric cases first. The nebulous symptoms plus the fracturing of articulacy and cognitive fog can cause any Lyme patient to simply appear mentally ill and mentally ill only. This is why we hear that young women—again, anecdotally—are dying of Lyme the fastest. This is also why we hear that chronic illness is a women's burden. Women simply aren't allowed to be physically sick until they are mentally sick, too, and then it is by some miracle or accident that the two can be separated for proper diagnosis. In the end, every Lyme patient has some psychiatric diagnosis, too, if anything because of the hell it takes getting to a diagnosis.

Global warming has opened the southern door of the United States not just to leish but to many other diseases. The big ones now entering our country include Zika, West Nile virus, chikungunya, and dengue fever. Even diseases like cholera, Ebola, Lyme, babesiosis, and bubonic plague will potentially infect more people as global warming accelerates.

My life is in full tilt, and I reach forward with joy.

At that time turbans had not yet arrived in Lyme- though I can report now that Margaret pushed the fashion onto Lyme's women, and within a few years, turbans were a common sight up and down Broad Street. I am not sure they complement empire-line gowns as well as other hats, and I believe some laughed behind their hands at the sight, but isn't fashion meant to entertain?

It's okay that I got sick, I suddenly realize. If Lyme hadn't taken me down so radically, I wouldn't have learned about stillness. I would not have discovered my enormous capacity to endure. I would have not have embraced this deeply contemplative place within my own being.

After you find out all the things that can go wrong, you life becomes less about living and more about waiting. For cancer. For dementia. Every look in a mirror, you scan for the red rash that means shingles. See also: Ringworm. See also: Lyme disease, meningitis, rheumatic fever, syphilis.

Lyme disease is new then, barely known. The doctor hasn’t tested me for it. We can see only what we have a name for. Now he crouches in front of the table. His eyes are ice blue, too bright. “There is nothing wrong with you,” he says, and his voice is artificially high, like he is talking to a child. “Not physically. Sometimes, when a person’s very sad…” Something inside me rings. I hate him. I hate him instantly. Outside, in the parking lot,

Visitors to Lyme in the nineteenth century, if they did not quite have to undergo the ordeal facing travellers to the ancient Greek colonies -Charles did not actually have to deliver a Periclean oration plus comprehensive world news summary from the steps of the Town Hall- were certainly expected to allow themselves to be examined and spoken to.

Someday, we'll be able to trace all mental illnesses to autoimmune disorders. But we're not there yet.

I better not get Lyme disease. That’s a hiking-honky sickness…. Oh, let’s see nature and catch some parasites!

convincing biologic evidence exists for symptomatic chronic B. burgdorferi infection in patients after recommended treatment regimens for Lyme disease.

Lyme disease is preventable, but only if Canadians have the information they need to prevent it.

They explained that most Lyme patients’ gall bladders cause major issues, because when they are not working properly, they act as a toxic magnet.

Lyme disease, psittacosis, Q fever: These three differ wildly in their particulars but share two traits in common. They are all zoonotic and they are all bacterial.

Lyme disease is now the most common tick-borne disease in North America and one of the fastest-increasing infectious diseases of any sort, especially in New England, the mid-Atlantic states, and Wisconsin.

Communicable meant a person could give it to another person. You could get Lyme disease, for instance, but you couldn’t give it to somebody else. Communicable diseases were the diseases that created crises.

Allison of RADAD: The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and Disability The ticks of Lyme Suck my blood of time And leave me rather drowsy. My feet move like tar With Epstein-Barr And I wake up feeling lousy. I fall asleep in my Pepsi With Narcolepsy To the chagrin of the soda jerk. My Chronic Fatigue (and thespian ability) puts me in the big league (of insurance fraud disability) So who the fuck needs to work!

Then there were all the diseases one is vulnerable to in the woods — giardiasis, eastern equine encephalitis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, schistosomiasis, brucellosis, and shigellosis, to offer but a sampling. Eastern equine encephalitis, caused by the prick of a mosquito, attacks the brain and central nervous system. If you’re lucky you can hope to spend the rest of your life propped in a chair with a bib around your neck, but generally it will kill you. There is no known cure. No less arresting is Lyme disease, which comes from the bite of a tiny deer tick. If undetected, it can lie dormant in the human body for years before erupting in a positive fiesta of maladies. This is a disease for the person who wants to experience it all. The symptoms include, but are not limited to, headaches, fatigue, fever, chills, shortness of breath, dizziness, shooting pains in the extremities, cardiac irregularities, facial paralysis, muscle spasms, severe mental impairment, loss of control of body functions, and — hardly surprising, really — chronic depression.

Lyme disease, psittacosis, Q fever: These three differ wildly in their particulars but share two traits in common. They are all zoonotic and they are all bacterial. They stand as reminders that not every bad, stubborn, new bug is a virus.

I know that I'm not the only one who struggles with feelings of self-pity. How many thousands of others are sidelined by the debilitating effects of Lyme disease? Multitudes hover on sofas and beds like me, too drained to do anything more than just the bare necessities of daily functioning. In fact, some can't even do that. Anyone living with chronic illness that imposes severe limitations must experience similar feelings of disappointment, frustration, fear, sadness, and envy. I am not alone.

The last few hours were certainly very painful," replied Anne: "but when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure. One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering---which was by no means the case at Lyme.

And so, what the patient knows to be true—this matters. What I know to be true matters. What anyone with chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivity, fibromyalgia, Lyme, lupus, MS, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s—what they know, their experience, it matters, and the experts should be listening to them.

Borrelia. Borrelia are spirochete bacteria typically transmitted by lice and ticks. (Lyme disease is caused by borrelia.) Rheumatoid arthritis, sarcoidosis, schizophrenia (suspected to be an autoimmune disease), and dementia (also suspected to be an autoimmune disease) are all associated with Borrelia infections.

Global warming has opened the southern door of the United States not just to leish but to many other diseases. The big ones now entering our country include Zika, West Nile virus, chikungunya, and dengue fever. Even diseases like cholera, Ebola, Lyme, babesiosis, and bubonic plague will potentially infect more people as global warming accelerates

symptoms can mimic those of cardiac, neurological, rheumatoid, and many other conditions.

Research strongly suggests that Bb can also be transmitted by a variety of other vectors, such as fleas, flies, gnats, mites, and mosquitoes.

more aggressive treatment approaches are necessary if cardiovascular and/or neurological systems are significantly involved.

But most striking of all, to our thinking, is that paid to Miss Austen by Lord Tennyson when, in some visit to Lyme not many years since, those with him pointed out this and the other feature of the place only to be interrupted with—”Never mind all that. Show me the exact spot where Louisa Musgrove fell!” Could non-historical verisimilitude go farther or mean more?

Dr. Cameron is hoping to release a new digital and audio book by the end of December 2022. This book summarizes Dr. Cameron’s understanding of Lyme disease based on his first 600 Lyme disease science blogs and 35+ years of treating Lyme disease patients. The book includes over 200 published Lyme disease cases. There is also space at the end of this book to share your comments and engage with Dr. Cameron

paleontological momentum had moved to England. In 1812, at Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast, an extraordinary child named Mary Anning—aged eleven, twelve, or thirteen, depending on whose account you read—found a strange fossilized sea monster, seventeen feet long and now known as the ichthyosaurus, embedded in the steep and dangerous cliffs along the English Channel. It was the start of a remarkable career. Anning would spend the next thirty-five years gathering

My body records certain events; an autopsy would show that I have had a child, broken some ribs, lost my appendix. Other physical assaults have left no trace; measles, mumps, malaria, suppurations and infections, coughs and colds, upheavals of the digestive system. When I was young I carried on my knee for many years a patch of delicately puckered pink skin preserving the time Gordon pushed me down a cliff at Lyme Regis (or, he would claim, did not); I can no longer find it - the body obliterates, also.

This is something that has been going on forever,” Craig Spencer, the director of global health in emergency medicine at Columbia University, says about the variability of human response to infection. “I wouldn’t be surprised if people are walking about with long Epstein-Barr virus, or long influenza. We all know someone who is low energy, who’s told to work harder. We have all heard about chronic Lyme sufferers, and those with ME/CFS. But they get written off.” Spencer understands something about how infections can do long-term damage, because he contracted Ebola while working in Guinea, fell ill upon his return to New York City, and then struggled with the virus’s ongoing effects. (Studies have suggested that the Ebola virus may linger in the body for years.) The difference between long COVID and other infection-associated illnesses is that it is happening “on such a huge scale—unlike anything we’ve seen before. It is harder for the medical community to write off,” Spencer told me. Indeed, many researchers I spoke with for this book hope that the race to understand long COVID will advance our understanding of other chronic conditions that follow infection, transforming medicine in the process.

This is usually accomplished by taking X-rays of the affected joints and analyzing blood for an ANA and rheumatoid factor (RF). Unfortunately, Lyme disease can cause false positive ANAs and rheumatoid factors due to a patient’s overstimulated immune system. This can lead to a mistaken diagnosis of lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. This is why drawing a CCP (cyclic citrullinated peptide) is so important. It is a specific marker for rheumatoid arthritis and will help determine whether the patient has true rheumatoid arthritis or not. Patients with a positive ANA or RF often are prescribed immunosuppressive drugs, such as steroids or immunomodulatory drugs, like Enbrel or Arava. These treatments can have dire consequences for the Lyme disease patient who is co-infected, since they are already immune-suppressed, and steroids can cause their underlying infections and subsequent manifestations

Those on cholesterol-lowering drugs should be cautious if they also have a mycoplasma infection because of the heavy dependence of the bacteria on cholesterol. The combination of mycoplasmas and cholesterol-lowering drugs can cause a significant decrease in cholesterol in the body, especially if the diet is also low in cholesterol. Cholesterol is an essential nutrient, crucial for cellular health, and also necessary as a substrate for steroid production in the body. Reductions below a certain point can cause significant problems.

It seems that leishmaniasis, a disease that has troubled the human race since time immemorial, has in the twenty-first century come into its own. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH, told our team bluntly that, by going into the jungle and getting leishmaniasis, “You got a really cold jolt of what it’s like for the bottom billion people on earth.” We were, he said, confronted in a very dramatic way with what many people have to live with their entire lives. If there’s a silver lining to our ordeal, he told us, “it’s that you’ll now be telling your story, calling attention to what is a very prevalent, very serious disease.” If leish continues to spread as predicted in the United States, by the end of the century it may no longer be confined to the “bottom billion” in faraway lands. It will be in our own backyards. Global warming has opened the southern door of the United States not just to leish but to many other diseases. The big ones now entering our country include Zika, West Nile virus, chikungunya, and dengue fever. Even diseases like cholera, Ebola, Lyme, babesiosis, and bubonic plague will potentially infect more people as global warming accelerates.

Because the second wave was so much more severe than the first, a lot of people refused to believe it could be the same disease. It had to be terrorism. They didn't care what medical experts kept telling them, about how it was the nature of influenza to occur in waves and that there was nothing about this pandemic, terrible though it was, that wasn't happening more or less as had long been predicted. No, not bioterrorism, others said, but a virus that had escaped from a laboratory. These were the same people who believed that both Lyme disease and West Nile virus were caused by germs that had escaped many years ago from a government lab off the coast of Long Island. They scoffed at the assertion that it was impossible to say for sure where the flu had begun because cases had appeared in several different countries at exactly the same time. Cover-up! Everyone knew the government was involved in the development of bioweapons. And although the Americans were not the only ones who were working on such weapons, the belief that they were somehow to blame--that the monster germ had most likely been created in an American lab, for American military purposes--would outlive the pandemic itself. In any case, according to a poll, eighty-two percent of Americans believed the government knew more about the flu than it was saying. And the number of people who declared themselves dead set against any vaccine the government came up with was steadily growing.

We end up at an outdoor paintball course in Jersey. A woodsy, rural kind of place that’s probably brimming with mosquitos and Lyme disease. When I find out Logan has never played paintball before, I sign us both up. There’s really no other option. And our timing is perfect—they’re just about to start a new battle. The worker gathers all the players in a field and divides us into two teams, handing out thin blue and yellow vests to distinguish friend from foe. Since Logan and I are the oldest players, we both become the team captains. The wide-eyed little faces of Logan’s squad follow him as he marches back and forth in front of them, lecturing like a hot, modern-day Winston Churchill. “We’ll fight them from the hills, we’ll fight them in the trees. We’ll hunker down in the river and take them out, sniper-style. Save your ammo—fire only when you see the whites of their eyes. Use your heads.” I turn to my own ragtag crew. “Use your hearts. We’ll give them everything we’ve got—leave it all on the field. You know what wins battles? Desire! Guts! Today, we’ll all be frigging Rudy!” A blond boy whispers to his friend, “Who’s Rudy?” The kid shrugs. And another raises his hand. “Can we start now? It’s my birthday and I really want to have cake.” “It’s my birthday too.” I give him a high-five. “Twinning!” I raise my gun. “And yes, birthday cake will be our spoils of war! Here’s how it’s gonna go.” I point to the giant on the other side of the field. “You see him, the big guy? We converge on him first. Work together to take him down. Cut off the head,” I slice my finger across my neck like I’m beheading myself, “and the old dog dies.” A skinny kid in glasses makes a grossed-out face. “Why would you kill a dog? Why would you cut its head off?” And a little girl in braids squeaks, “Mommy! Mommy, I don’t want to play anymore.” “No,” I try, “that’s not what I—” But she’s already running into her mom’s arms. The woman picks her up—glaring at me like I’m a demon—and carries her away. “Darn.” Then a soft voice whispers right against my ear. “They’re already going AWOL on you, lass? You’re fucked.” I turn to face the bold, tough Wessconian . . . and he’s so close, I can feel the heat from his hard body, see the small sprigs of stubble on that perfect, gorgeous jaw. My brain stutters, but I find the resolve to tease him. “Dear God, Logan, are you smiling? Careful—you might pull a muscle in your face.” And then Logan does something that melts my insides and turns my knees to quivery goo. He laughs. And it’s beautiful. It’s a crime he doesn’t do it more often. Or maybe a blessing. Because Logan St. James is a sexy, stunning man on any given day. But when he laughs? He’s heart-stopping. He swaggers confidently back to his side and I sneer at his retreating form. The uniformed paintball worker blows a whistle and explains the rules. We get seven minutes to hide first. I cock my paintball shotgun with one hand—like Charlize Theron in Fury fucking Road—and lead my team into the wilderness. “Come on, children. Let’s go be heroes.” It was a massacre. We never stood a chance. In the end, we tried to rush them—overpower them—but we just ended up running into a hail of balls, getting our hearts and guts splattered with blue paint. But we tried—I think Rudy and Charlize would be proud

In March, at HHS’s request, several large pharmaceutical companies—Novartis, Bayer, Sanofi, and others—donated their inventory, a total of 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine and 2 million of chloroquine, to the Strategic National Stockpile, managed by BARDA, an agency under the DHHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.56 BARDA’s Director, Dr. Rick Bright, later claimed the chloroquine drugs were deadly, and he needed to protect the American public from them.57 Bright colluded with FDA to restrict use of the donated pills to hospitalized patients. FDA publicized the authorization using language that led most physicians to believe that prescribing the drug for any purpose was off-limits. But at the beginning of June, based on clinical trials that intentionally gave unreasonably high doses to hospitalized patients and failed to start the drug until too late, FDA took the unprecedented step of revoking HCQ’s emergency authorization,58 rendering that enormous stockpile of valuable pills off limits to Americans while conveniently indemnifying the pharmaceutical companies for their inventory losses by allowing them a tax break for the donations. After widespread use of the drug for 65 years, without warning, FDA somehow felt the need to send out an alert on June 15, 2020 that HCQ is dangerous, and that it required a level of monitoring only available at hospitals.59 In a bit of twisted logic, Federal officials continued to encourage doctors to use the suddenly-dangerous drug without restriction for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme and malaria. Just not for COVID. With the encouragement of Dr. Fauci and other HHS officials, many states simultaneously imposed restrictions on HCQ’s use.

It was said that the Old Folk controlled the power of fire, among other things, but that was in the Long and Long Ago. Before that, the fathers of the Old Folk caught a spark with flint and steel and their own desire to live. It was also said that the world was a great wheel, and everything came round to what it once had been, and so Steven Boughmount knelt in the snow with rocks in his hands, trying to catch a flame. He was having little luck. Just over the low hills, beyond this scrub of forest, the village was warm and sleeping behind its wall. That’s where I should be, Steven thought as he scraped the edge of one rock against the other. Not in bed, not yet, but stretched out in my chair with my feet up, a pipe smoking just right in my hand and Heather curled up beside me. The boys are all asleep, but maybe we’ll stay up for a while. Maybe we’ll move to the bedroom, maybe not. That’s where I should be, not up to my ass in snow trying to light a fire. “C’mon, bastard,” he said, and drug the sharp edge of the rock in his right hand against the flat of the one in his left. A white spark flew, and then died before it could reach the stripped branches and dried moss he had laid out on the frozen ground. Snow crunched somewhere off to the left of him. Steven heard soft, bare footsteps. They were coming, all right. And they were in a hurry, running toward a village protected by two drunks on either side of a leaning gate. That was why Steven sat in the snow. When the Guards slept, the Hunters went to work. And what sounded like a whole clan of goblins was passing him by because he couldn’t get a damn fire lit. Steven drew his sword. It was called Fangodoom, given to him by his mother just before she died. Fangodoom was a dwarf blade, of steel mined and forged deep within the Lyme Mountains centuries ago. Goblins near, the blade all but gleamed though there wasn’t any moon. Again he wondered if this would be the last time, and again he knew that if it was, it was. His hand turned into a fist on the hilt of his weapon, and he prayed. “Lord, make me Your hammer.

Flagyl was clearly effective in the treatment of Lyme disease. But how did it work? As early as 1967 The British Journal of Venereal Diseases had published a study showing Flagyl to be effective in certain cases of syphilis, and that it had an effect on bacterial DNA and RNA irrespective of bacterial replication. Could this be the mechanism of Flagyl’s action against Burrelia burgdorferi? The key to Flagyl’s effectiveness on Lyme, however, was not reported until several months after my study was presented. Dr. O. Brorson, a Norwegian researcher, published a paper on Flagyl and its effect on the cystic forms of Lyme disease six months after I presented my research. The cystic form of Lyme disease, it turns out, is one mechanism that Borrelia burgdorferi utilizes to persist in the body. Dr. Brorson reported that Flagyl would cause Borrelia cysts to rupture, and he went on to publish that he could see under the microscope the cell wall forms of Borrelia burgdorferi (helical/spiral–shaped organisms) transform into cystic forms, and under proper conditions convert back into mobile spirochetes. A review of the medical literature revealed that these cystic forms had, in fact, been reported in syphilis. No one had clearly made the link between Borrelia and a cystic form of the organism that could persist for long periods of time in a dormant state. It was a highly evolved survival mechanism that would allow the organism to reemerge when conditions were optimal. My patient, Mary, had been treated initially with Plaquenil, which according to Dr. Brorson’s research also affects the cystic forms, yet it appeared that it was not powerful enough to destroy the dormant forms and prevent a relapse, or to prevent her from passing it on to her fetus. She had also been treated with drugs that addressed the cell wall and intracellular forms of Lyme. Although Plaquenil has some effect on cystic forms, it is often primarily used in antibiotic regimens with Lyme disease to alkalize the intracellular compartment, modulate autoimmune reactions, and affect essential enzymes necessary for bacterial replication. Clearly, however, it is not powerful enough to destroy enough of the

That’s horse country, of course, where women do their shopping in jodhpurs or jeans with holes at the knees and men walk around in flip-flops and everyone gets Lyme disease.

I better not get Lyme disease. That’s a hiking-honky sickness….

researchers like Dr. Eva Sapi have shown Lyme is like some other spirochetes—it has biofilms. These are very tough biofilms to defeat unless caught in the “acute stage.” A tough, “mature biofilm” allows organisms to “laugh at” many antibiotics. Some medical professionals interested in Lyme often ignore the immune suppressing Bartonella bacterium, which is more common than Lyme. Ignoring coinfections may increase the risk of fatality with Babesia and possibly FL1953. These healers also may not realize that the highly genetically complex Lyme spirochete appears to have a troublesome biofilm. Performing a simple direct test at laboratory companies whose testing kits have reduced sensitivity will probably result in more negatives for tick-borne diseases. The ultimate result is anti-science and anti-truth. Searching for tick infections with one test is like writing in “Lincoln” at the next presidential election.

No convincing biologic evidence exists for symptomatic chronic B. burgdorferi infection in patients after recommended treatment regimens for Lyme disease.

two-edged sword; Her feet go down

Next time, I shall hold out for a man who expresses at least passing curiosity about what I think, and feel, and want.” “What is it that you want, Georgiana?” “Purpose, foremost—something more meaningful than endless balls and dinners and theatre parties. Variety—of places and people and activity. And a home of my own.” She paused. “I believe it is time I left Pemberley to you and Elizabeth and your children.” They were in no hurry for her to go. “Pemberley is your home as long as you want it.” “I know it is. But I would like to be mistress of my own. It does not have to be a grand home, just mine—and my husband’s, of course.” Darcy smiled. “I am glad to hear you intend to let him share it, whoever the poor fellow may be.” “You should indeed feel sorry for him, as my previous failures have increased my requirements. I want a man of integrity and principle, whom I can respect and admire, who respects and appreciates me in turn, and who makes me feel safe, happy, and loved.” She paused. “In short, I want what Elizabeth has.

The majority of Lyme patients I see in my practice have peripheral neuropathy. It presents as burning sensations in different parts of the body, or tingling and numbness that often comes and goes. Patients usually describe this in the upper and lower extremities, and often on their face and scalp. Many patients have gone to the emergency room for a CAT scan of the head or an MRI of the brain to rule out a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or stroke/cerebrovascular accident (CVA), since they had numbness, which was new or increased, in one part of their body. The doctors would rule out a TIA or stroke and send them home without a diagnosis, often telling them to follow up with their primary care physician and a neurologist.

I think she was from Connecticut, but not fancy Connecticut, with the money and the Kennedy cousins and the Lyme disease. I think she was from New Haven, or Bridgeport.

One example of this damage occurs when ill-informed physicians diagnose brown recluse spider bites as the cause of skin lesions in areas of the continent where recluse spiders of any species are exceedingly rare or have never been found. When the quantity of brown recluse bite diagnoses greatly outnumbers the verified specimens of recluse spiders in a particular area, it logically follows that the spiders cannot be responsible for all these incidents. Some of these misdiagnosed skin conditions, such as cancer, lymphoma, group A Streptococcus bacterial infection, and Lyme disease, can cause great suffering, irreversible damage, and possibly death. When a wrong diagnosis is made, spider bite treatment is ineffective and the correct treatment is delayed or never given.

In addition, traditional medical education has always taught doctors to find one cause for all of the patient’s symptoms. This is deeply ingrained in every physician’s education. We generally are not taught to look for multifactorial causes of an illness. Therefore, if a Lyme disease patient presents with thirty-five different symptoms, the established paradigm would be to try and explain these complaints according to the accepted medical model: one primary diagnosis. If the doctor could not find a single etiology, or cause, for your symptoms, it must be because it is psychological in nature, and you are crazy. Or the answer might be elusive because the symptoms can’t be understood in the HMO-dictated fifteen-minute time frame. Or perhaps the physician hasn’t looked hard enough, or just sees the world through one narrow diagnostic lens.

Everyone has a story. I see many clients suffering from chronic diseases such as Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, and generalized pain. Especially in these clients, I always look for the emotional component. And there is always an emotional component. Either there’s a recent divorce, death in the family, trouble with a child or parent, or financial strife that’s led to excessive stress. To reemphasize this point: you cannot heal if you don’t heal your emotions.

But I feel as though I've been gifted with the chance to view strength and beauty through an alternative lens. Experiencing illness has lead me to meet people and witness things that have demonstrated strength that can't be measured by miles ran or weights lifted, and beauty that can't be washed away with water or time.

Sir George Somers, an experienced mariner, was put in charge of the fleet. Roughly sixty years of age, Somers, from the town of Lyme on England’s southwest coast, had a resume that included service under Essex, Sir Francis Drake, and the privateering Sir John Hawkins.30 A member of parliament, he was an accomplished mariner and navigator. His second in command as master of the fleet’s flagship was Captain Christopher Newport, whose maritime pedigree was every bit as impressive as Somers’s. About forty-nine years of age in 1609, Newport had gone to sea as a young man, sailing to South America and the Caribbean as a privateer. In 1590, when he was about thirty years of age, Newport had been in a sea battle with two Spanish treasure ships off the coast of Cuba. In that battle, Newport lost his right arm but persevered. For the next thirteen years, he was an active Caribbean privateer and was a leading participant in the capture, in 1592, of the Spanish treasure ship the Madre de Dios, a prize that carried about half a million pounds in gems, spices, silks, and other goods. Newport’s long experience as a privateer helped him establish strong links with English merchants. He was also known to King James I, having presented the monarch with two live crocodiles and a wild boar following one of his New World voyages. In 1606, he was named commander of the first Virginia expedition and sailed as captain of the Susan Constant, flagship of the first Virginia fleet.31 By the time he was named sailing master of the flagship of the 1609 fleet, he had made three crossings between England and Jamestown.

By that point, those on the vessel were almost beyond caring. Mountainous seas, driving rain, lightning, and screaming winds continued as the ship labored simply to stay afloat. Sylvester Jourdain, Somers’s gentleman friend from Lyme, later said all the men on the ship “being utterly spent, tired, and disabled for longer labor, were even resolved, without any hope of their lives, to shut up the hatches and to have committed themselves to the mercy of the sea.” While there was no water or beer to drink, a few of the gentlemen and highborn passengers, he said, had kept back some “good and comfortable waters”—wine and spirits. These passengers quit work, fetched their “waters,” and started drinking, “taking their last leave one of the other until their more joyful and happy meeting in a more blessed world.

While a few intrepid individuals yet traveled for pleasure, most foreign journeys were undertaken by necessity, as Darcy’s rare trips had been.

Additional Prevention Measures

As zoonotic diseases continue to emerge and reemerge all over the world, the need to replace old reductionist paradigms will only increase. The fact that infectious diseases are ecological systems can hardly be overemphasized. Once we recognize this fact, we come to realize that identifying the organisms involved, even in exquisite detail, is not enough; instead, interactions among organisms determine disease risk.

To assure Sabbath observance in the Connecticut colony, the General Court required in 1668 that constables in every town “make search after all offenders.” The ruling specified that anyone who “shall keep out of the meeting house during the public worship unnecessarily, there being convenient room in the house,” would pay five shillings for each offense or sit in the stocks one hour. Not everyone in Lyme complied. Two years later the county court in New London heard “the complaint of the constable of Lyme concerning Mr. and Mrs. Ely, their profanation of the Sabbath and also contempt of authority.” The clerk summoned Richard Ely (1610–1684) together with his wife and “ye Negro servant Moses” to appear at the next court session in June 1670 to answer the charges.

They measured, surveyed, and allocated whatever land had not been distributed. They built roads, bridges, fences, livestock pounds, and public landings. They exported barrel staves and imported “salt and Barbados goods on reasonable terms.” They authorized the building of a warehouse whose owner would “supply the town of Lyme with salt and certain woods upon reasonable terms,” and they prohibited the cutting of timber on common land and the “transport of the same out of the town” because “all sorts of timber grow scarce among us.” They also managed the operation of the gristmill to keep it “in repair continually for to grind the town’s corn all winter and summer,” and they decided the length of the school year, authorizing two dame schools “for teaching young children and maids to read and whatever else they may be capable of learning, either knitting or sewing.” In 1685 they decided to erect “a pair of stocks & scaffold to answer the laws within a month at the meeting house.

It was in the parking lot that Dakota became even less attractive. Ruby and Sabina were just driving slowly towards the exit when Dakota Lyme shouted, ‘You’re a phoney, Redfort. You cheat, I know you cheat, and your clothes are ugly, you dress like a boy.’ Dakota stamped her foot. Sabina Redfort reversed the car, wound down the window and said, ‘And you, pipsqueak, are a very unpleasant little madam who will never be attractive no matter what you wear!’ Then she put her foot down on the pedal and took off at more speed than was wise. Ruby winked at her mother and said, ‘Nice going, Mom.’ And her mother said, ‘I simply can’t abide a sore loser.

bentonite clay, Saccharomyces boulardii, N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), activated charcoal, and cholestyramine. (Binders are natural or pharmaceutical materials that

Thanks to our new biotechnologies, we now have the power to change the evolutionary trajectories of species that seem destined to disappear, to rescue and revitalize ecosystems that are threatened by the ever-expanding human footprint or that are struggling to adapt to our planet’s changing climate. We could, for example, transfer the domestic ferret’s resistance to Sylvatic plague to black-footed ferrets that are facing extinction across their native range because of the introduced disease. Or we could transfer heat-tolerance between coral populations that are suffering as the oceans warm, or immunize white-footed mice against Lyme disease so that they can no longer pass the disease to humans. We may even eventually bring something back. Not a mammoth or a passenger pigeon, but instead some trait or function or aspect of an extinct species that can, in its re-establishment, restore some missing ecosystem function and allow other species to thrive in today’s altered world.

Maya’s face as though wondering what to tell her. ‘It’s just I know they weren’t always happy, and I did once wonder if they’d have stayed together… There was something my husband, George, said when you were first in my maths class. As you know, he taught the other year one class at your primary school and mentioned how once he’d had to break up an argument between your parents when they were waiting to pick you up from school. It must have been pretty heated for him to remember it after all that time – he wasn’t one to gossip. Apparently, Mrs Lyons wouldn’t let you out of your classroom until George had managed to calm them down.’ Maya feels her stomach clench. ‘All couples argue.’ ‘I know.’ Mrs Ellis pats her hand. ‘And that’s why you mustn’t worry about it. It was a long time ago, anyway.’ The bus is stopping. Bending to her bag, Mrs Ellis moves it so that it’s not in the way of the people getting on. ‘But if you ever feel you want to spread your wings, you mustn’t feel your dad would be on his own. He’s a grown man, and you can’t make him your responsibility. I’m sure he has friends, neighbours, even work colleagues who would keep an eye on him. Doesn’t he have his own private practice in Lyme Regis?’ ‘Yes, but it’s not the same. He needs me.’ Maya’s voice slips away, so it’s barely a whisper. ‘Yes, he needs me. It’s why I couldn’t go to university.’ She doesn’t want to talk about that time for, although her dad had been encouraging when she’d first told him she was applying, a week after the forms were filled in, a cloud had settled over him. One that was darker than previous ones. Maya had tempted him with his favourite food, enticed him out for healing walks along the clifftop, but nothing she’d done could lift it. Eventually, telling herself it was because of what she’d done, she’d deleted her application from the computer. When her dad had found out and asked why she’d done it, she’d told him it was because she couldn’t face more studying. Would rather earn a living. Whether he’d believed her or not, she couldn’t say. What she did know was that he’d never tried to change her mind. ‘Do you like your job, Maya?’ Maya lowers her eyes and studies her hands. It’s something she hasn’t given much thought to. Her job is just something she does to get through

Remember choosing a treatment option should be a shared decision between physicians and their patients; also there should be regular follow-up visits to re-assess a patient’s response to treatment.

It’s like, mind and body work in tandem, so she thinks she’s sick and then she convinces herself and it manifests in her body, so she actually is sick at this point. Her fake Lyme disease has totally crippled her for real.

This includes testing for Borrelia burgdorferi (the bacteria associated with Lyme disease) and many of the co-infections. I’ll discuss Lyme disease and the related co-infections in Chapter 10. Viruses

Mimosas bloomed in the shadow of Lyme’s very own Vesuvius, the conical hill called Golden Cap.

two vast areas of unstable ground, where shale and mud can slip suddenly into the sea, making the land unsuitable for building. It’s even dangerous to walk upon because of the possibility of being swallowed by the mud. In Lyme, even nature seems to be letting loose her stays.

patients with initially negative tests will develop positive results if retested six weeks later.) Proof of Lyme disease among these individuals who are negative on the two-tiered approach to testing may be hard to obtain, but occasionally one may get confirmation from other positive tests such as other antibody-based tests (C6 peptide ELISA or an IgG Western blot [even though the ELISA is negative]), a PCR assay for Borrelia DNA, or growth of the organism in culture. Experimental or newer tests (for example, tests of immune complexes or of Borrelia specific proteins) may also prove informative

We lay in the tent at the edge of Lyme Regis, on a patch of grass between the lobster pots and the chalets, and let death in.

What if I swallow a tick that has Lyme disease? Will my stomach acid kill the tick and the borreliosis, or would I get Lyme disease from the inside out? —Christopher Vogel

He was rather surprised to see a signpost on the quay—one arm pointed to Seaton, the other to Sidmouth. He had not known that there was another through road besides the one by which he had arrived. Later that evening he looked it up on a map and found that there was an alternative route along the coast which took a big loop seawards, rejoining his own road near Lyme Regis.

After contracting Lyme disease and operating at ~10% capacity for 9 months in 2014, I made health #1. Prior to Lyme, I’d worked out and eaten well, but when push came to shove, “health #1” was negotiable. Now, it’s literally #1. What does this mean? If I sleep poorly and have an early morning meeting, I’ll cancel the meeting last-minute if needed and catch up on sleep. If I’ve missed a workout and have a conference call coming up in 30 minutes? Same. Late-night birthday party with a close friend? Not unless I can sleep in the next morning. In practice, strictly making health #1 has real social and business ramifications. That’s a price I’ve realized I MUST be fine with paying, or I will lose weeks or months to sickness and fatigue. Making health #1 50% of the time doesn’t work. It’s absolutely all-or-nothing. If it’s #1 50% of the time, you’ll compromise precisely when it’s most important not to. The artificial urgency common to startups makes mental and physical health a rarity. I’m tired of unwarranted last-minute “hurry up and sign” emergencies and related fire drills. It’s a culture of cortisol.

Why doesn't everyone get more worked up about the fact that we're all going to die, I wondered on the way home from Lyme Regis after the car accident. Adults didn't seem to mention death at all. I now realise that the reason adults don't mention death is because they are worked up about it, not because they're not. It's not too small to mention - it's too big. Now I'm an adult. And death is too big for me.

We want our kids to be able to play in the woods!” “Because Lyme disease is such a blast?” I demand.

In the absence of certainty, medical science remains unsure what story to tell. Too often it turns away from patients rather than listening to the long and chaotic stories we tell, narratives that start and stop and double back, searching for meaning in the or house rash that broke out that day or the car accident that triggered pain of the death after which nothing was the same. Indeed, one reason that people who may or may not have Lyme disease cling to the diagnosis of chronic Lyme as a name for their medically unexplained symptoms is that the impersonal nature of modern medicine has no better explanations, at least not on the level of storytelling. When we suffer, we want recognition. Where science is silent, narrative creeps in.

After widespread use of the drug for 65 years, without warning, FDA somehow felt the need to send out an alert on June 15, 2020 that HCQ is dangerous, and that it required a level of monitoring only available at hospitals.59 In a bit of twisted logic, Federal officials continued to encourage doctors to use the suddenly-dangerous drug without restriction for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme and malaria. Just not for COVID.

If 400,000 cases of Lyme a year yielded 50,000 chronic cases, and if even only a few thousand of those were as bad as mine, then, over the accumulated years, tens of thousands of people had to be facing impossible challenges without the moneyed, highly educated advantages that helped us, barely, to survive.

The Army demand for a landing area stretching from Ramsgate to Lyme Regis was regarded as quite impracticable by the Navy.

There’s no such thing as a clean tick.1 —Willy Burgdorfer

Interestingly, the definitive test for Lyme disease, called a western blot, was suggestive, but not absolutely diagnostic, for Lyme disease. That’s how it is with most cases of “Lyme disease.” I can’t absolutely tell you today whether or not I was infected with Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme.

On this journey with our disease we may experience all of the emotions I listed and more, including feeling hopeless about the present and about the future, but our God f hope quietly and tenderly reminds us to hope even when everything feels hopeless.

Our greatest hope does not rest in the death of suffering. Neither does our help lie in us having a full and perfect life, with no pain, no brokenness, and no Lyme disease. Instead our hope lies in God and we hope in the fact that this is our temporary home and our forever home with Him in Heaven is perfect. This hope- this beautiful and living hope (I Peter 1:3-4) is for the future but also gives us hope for our present days.

Lyme is a word. Not a sentence.

Humans have eaten eggs for thousands of years. They were once an amazing survival food for us to eat in areas of the planet where there were no other food options at certain times of year. That changed with the turn of the 20th century, though—when the autoimmune, viral, bacterial, and cancer epidemics began. The average person eats over 350 eggs a year. That includes whole eggs and also all the foods with hidden egg ingredients. If you’re struggling with any illness, such as Lyme disease, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, migraines, or fibromyalgia, avoiding eggs can give your body the support it needs to get better. The biggest issue with eggs is that they’re a prime food for cancer and other cysts, fibroids, tumors, and nodules. Women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), breast cancer, or other cysts and tumors should avoid eggs altogether. Also, if you’re trying to prevent cancer, fight an existing cancer, or avoid a cancer relapse, steer clear. Removing eggs from your diet completely will give you a powerful fighting chance to reverse disease and heal.

Be careful... What the dude said, ain’t it? ... One lived in the woods and didn’t pay his taxes. Musta been before Lyme disease, when you could still get by with that shit. You know the dude I talkin’ about. Said to watch out for jobs you got to dress up for.” “Thoreau.” “Yeah, that’s him.

Certain healing foods can help your body ward off or recover from the viruses behind Lyme disease symptoms. Star anise, asparagus, wild blueberries, radishes, celery, cinnamon, garlic, apricots, and onions