P atricia Smith—longtime President of the Lyme Disease Association, two-term member of the federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group, and fierce advocate for Lyme patients—has passed away. She died peacefully on August 17, 2024, under hospice care, with her family at her bedside.
Her advocacy on behalf of Lyme patients spanned four decades. In the 1980s, when Smith was a school board member in Wall Township, New Jersey, local students and teachers were contracting a little-known infection called Lyme disease. She would later recall: “I wanted to learn everything I could about the disease to prevent my children and others from getting it. I did not understand how my district could have dozens of sick kids and staff, and no one knew anything or told the district anything.” That’s when she started digging into Lyme disease, sharing what she found with others.
Lyme Disease Hit Close to Home
Within a few years, two of Pat’s daughters showed symptoms of the illness, and she had to fight to get them diagnosed and treated. “All the while I did local advocacy,” she said. “In the mid-90s when I did my first ever picket at a New Jersey hospital where the doctor there was preventing treatment for Lyme, and my daughter was in 18-hour-long temporal lobe seizures six to seven days a week, for a three-year period, I came home to find her in the fetal position and totally non-communicative. I made a vow that day that if she recovered, I would never let another mother go through what I had been through alone. I have tried to keep that vow. “
Pat met Congressman Christopher Smith, her local representative, at a town hall meeting in 1992. After she explained the plight of Lyme disease patients, including her own daughters, the two began a collaboration that would last over 30 years. She twice testified before the United States House of Representatives about Lyme disease – and would go on to serve on various government panels………..Join or login below to continue reading.
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