TOUCHED BY LYME: Facebook chat with NY Lyme reporter tonight
Log in to chat with investigative reporter Mary Beth Pfeiffer, who wrote a series on Lyme in the Poughkeepsie Journal
Mary Beth Pfeiffer is the Poughkeepsie Journal reporter who penned a dynamite series on Lyme disease last week. It was the culmination of three months of research. Mary Beth spoke to scientists, physicians, and patients and plowed through reams of scientific reports.
She also had an “up close and personal” encounter with Lyme herself. To her surprise, while working on the story, she found a bull’s-eye rash on her right side. She was diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease during the course of her research.
Poughkeepsie is in Dutchess County, New York, which has the most reported cases of Lyme disease in the nation. Five MDs in that state are also in danger of losing their licenses for treating Lyme outside the guidelines of the IDSA. If you haven’t read Mary Beth’s series on this yet, I suggest you take the time to do so. (Click here.)
At 7 pm ET tonight (Thursday, August 23) she’ll take part in a live Facebook chat about Lyme disease. I strongly encourage Lyme patients and advocates to log in and take part.
I spoke with Mary Beth briefly this morning, and asked her what she hoped would happen during the Facebook event. Among other things, she hopes it will be a forum for people to tell her what other aspects of the Lyme story need to be covered.
You need to have a Facebook account in order to take part. To do that, go to Facebook.com. Click here for the link to the event itself.
TOUCHED BY LYME is written by Dorothy Kupcha Leland, LymeDisease.org’s VP for Education and Outreach. Contact her at dleland@lymedisease.org.
Please look into the lives and challenges of school-aged children. My son has encountered many barriers in trying to get through high school while ill with Lyme. We don’t live in NY, but go to LymeTeens or other online groups and you will find many such kids. Some are at home and feel isolated. Some, like my son, try to go to school but struggle with nearly non-existent support systems. Many young lives are being derailed.
I had Lyme throughout my middle and high school careers and my entire adult life sans a brief remission in 2002-2004. I didn’t know what it was until a few years ago. When you’re sick like that as a kid it’s weird because people don’t understand what’s wrong so they assume it’s mental, and you get pushed harder to keep up (or are prescribed antidepressants). Or, like me, you have your own personal demons that push you to perform despite your “afflictions”. I turn 40 next year and Bb has taken more territory to the point where I can’t work and I can’t qualify for disability. I’ve become a burden when I might’ve been a resource to others. I stopped trying to make sense of it all. Kids are good at making the best of whatever they’ve got. My life lesson: taking personal responsibility for focusing on what I can do (no matter how often in the day it changes) versus what I can’t do and what others are doing. I have healed as much in isolation as I have in company and have found it to be easier in isolation frankly. Imagine getting queried regularly about how you are doing when you don’t even have a clue? I find it much easier to manage this warfare on my own and I encourage more self-reliance to those so afflicted because it is you who are strongest and understand best (even if you don’t understand-you are the only one experiencing it). I wouldn’t wish Lyme on my worst enemy…-Bug Killer #2
Dena is a precious daughter of mine and her life has been taken from all who love her. She is a registered nurse but cannot work and is sick all of the time. She has two precious little sons that she can’t take care of most of the time. She has been fighting this disease for a a long time. We can’t seem to get the right treatment to kill this diseasse,