Sacramento Bee, May 11, 2004

By Cynthia H. Craft

Monika Gleason and Shayla DeRenne have plenty in common. They finish each other’s sentences, exchange texts at 3 a.m., share a love of horses and have trouble holding onto friends.

So they’ve become their own best friends, like twins really, who met and developed their bond under the unhappiest of circumstances: sickness and pain.

Both suffer from late-stage Lyme disease, an often misunderstood ailment that some call the invisible disease because it can take years to set in and even longer to be correctly diagnosed. Patients like Gleason and DeRenne, who are college-age and appear fit despite their illnesses, have a hard time getting others – especially their peers – to grasp how truly sick they are.