Focus – Opinions and Features

The following is written by a 23-year-old woman who writes the Dreaming Panda blog, about her experiences coping with Lyme disease and PANS/PANDAS—an autoimmune condition that can be triggered by such infections as strep, Lyme disease, and others. By Iris Ainsley In 2012, when I... Read More »

By Kerry Lawless Looking back, it’s easy to see the signs, to recognize the symptoms, to know that it was Lyme disease. But in 2007, I had never heard of Lyme disease. It was something we still thought of as rare. Not as something you can pick up anywhere in Ireland. I got... Read More »

By Nancy Marie Allen On a warm August night in 2004, my husband and I went to a local AMVETS hall to celebrate a friend’s birthday. While we enjoyed the music and food, I knew something was wrong as I began to feel increasing pain in my legs. I suddenly felt unwell and we left... Read More »

By Phyllis Mervine A friend of mine died last week in her sleep. She was only 49. She wasn’t my close friend, but she was a very close friend of close friends, so it was shocking nonetheless and totally unexpected. Suspecting something cardiac, they scheduled an autopsy. I... Read More »

By Laura Durnell Porochista Khakpour’s insightful and haunting narrative of her battle with incurable late-stage Lyme disease is more than a memoir of her own illness. In Sick, Khakpour spotlights America’s diseased health care system, and in particular how it infects the most... Read More »

Phyllis Mervine, Founder and President of LymeDisease.org, submitted the following public comment to the federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group. Towards the end of the Tick-Borne Diseases Working Group (TBDWG) meeting on June 21, 2018, there was some discussion about the... Read More »

By Shona Curley Before Lyme, when something didn’t go my way, I stressed out. Like most healthy people, I was perfectly functional that way. I rushed my kids off to school, taught Pilates for eight hours, got home in time for dinner, dishes and bedtime – even if I was... Read More »

By Aaron J. Jackson It’s been almost a year since I tried to kill myself. As a doctoral student living in the leafy suburb of Brookline, Massachusetts, in 2015, I chanced upon a tick—a tiny vampire the size of a poppy seed—that changed my life forever and nearly brought it to an... Read More »

By Janet Jemmott There was no stopping the barreling train of this Herxheimer reaction. I’d been in a migrainous state for ten days. I’d medicate with Imitrex; the headache would fade, only to pop back up the next morning or late in the afternoon. I planned my activity carefully,... Read More »