NEWS: Two Lyme disease bills target gap in treatment in Texas
A Texas state senator who has had Lyme disease himself wants to make it easier to get treatment in his state. He has proposed bills which focus on training doctors to recognize Lyme disease and help set up a limited defense for physicians accused of overusing antibiotics to treat Lyme.
From the American-Statesman:
Two Lyme disease bills target gap in treatment in Texas
By Chuck Lindell
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 8:49 p.m. Thursday, April 28, 2011
State Sen. Chris Harris blames Lyme disease, left undiagnosed for 2½ years in the mid-1990s, for a heart attack and bone damage that left him with two titanium shoulders and a severely broken foot put back together with steel plates and screws.
“It rotted out my bones,” Harris said of the tick-borne bacterial disease.
But Harris said his doctor, fearing punishment from the Texas Medical Board, initially refused to treat him. The doctor believed a long-term course of antibiotics was required, he said, but the disciplinary board seemed to back treatment that limited antibiotic use to one month or less.
Harris said he got a lucky break when his doctor lined up 17 physicians to take turns writing prescriptions. Many long-term Lyme disease patients are forced to travel out of state to receive similar treatment, and those who can’t afford it are forced to suffer a debilitating disease with limited treatment options, he said.
Harris, R-Arlington, poured his experience into a bill that originally sought to force the Texas Medical Board and Texas Board of Nursing to recognize as valid the long-term use of antibiotics — sometimes lasting years — recommended in the treat-until-recovery approach of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society.
That bill, opposed by the medical establishment, was dead on arrival. But a compromise recently reached with the Texas Medical Association has revived the bill, which along with an identical measure by Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, received back-to-back committee hearings Tuesday and Wednesday.
Read the rest of the article here.
Seems to make a difference who has this disease and how it is treated. If you get Lyme….you "get it"!!
In Montana, after (8 black-legged) tick bites in a tick-endemic area w/ life-threatening progressive neurological and systemic s/s/complications w/
a) (CDC) "Lyme"-definitive Erythema Migrans rashes,
b) "Rickettsia"-definitive Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever maculopapular, "black-measle" hemorrhagic rashes, complicated by "rickettsia" Erhlichioses rashes, and,
c) "Bartonella"-definitive rashes,
with progressive neurological and systemic s/s/complications of late- disseminated acute and chronic disease, further.
Ironically, after referred, and while under the care of, knowledgeable qualified out of state Lyme/Assoc. Disease Specialists, w/ findings of (ADA) Disability d/t complications of late-stage chronic Lyme disease and co-infections, faced w/ civil and criminal HIPAA violations, w/ brutal, cruel unlawful-Discrimination/victimization(injury), Abusive Harassment (humiliation, intimidation, threats coercion and manipulation) and Malicious Retaliation (emotional, physical, psychological and financial harm) under (ADA) of 1990, Title I, II, III, IV, Section 504 Rehabilitation. w/ Involuntary Committment d/t severe bias for personal and political gain, by and thru a court-appointed psychiatrist, denied procedural and substantive due process, in flagrant violations of protections under (ADA) federal law, e.g. "None of your physical symptoms nor the physical symptoms of your two minor daughters have even been substantiated by any physicians. This patient suffers from a serious mental illness. She is a harm to herself, her two minor daughters dand others. She is dysfunctional and disorganized. She is gravely disabled. She requires Involuntary Committment w/ restraint in solitary isolation in a locked facility, the Montana State Mental Hospital for up to (3) months or longer –
Since July 2006, denied rights of procedural and substantive due process, w/ taking of life, liberty, property (real and personal) and privacy. "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty and property without due process under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.
A petition is being circulated on the internet to get President Obama to
nullify the outrageous IDSA guidelines. You can get information about this
petition and how to add your name to it at Jenna’s Lyme blog. I have no
affiliation with her blog but this is how I learned about it.
Here is the bad news: We are only getting about 400 signatures daily.
We cannot get the minimum of 26,000 signatures by Feb 20th unless we
get at least twice that many signatures. Too many people don’t even know about this petition but the stakes are sky-high.