Todd Murray has suffered from Lyme-related symptoms for four decades. His mother, Polly Murray, sounded the original alarm about Lyme disease back in the ’70s.

From the Boston Globe, Dec. 3, 2013

by Beth Daley

Last in a series.

FLORENCE, Ore. — In the middle of lunch at a riverside café, Todd Murray paused. His blue-gray eyes took on an intense stare as he looked out across the Siuslaw River.

A beat later, the forgotten word came to him. “Acorns,” he said. And the 49-year-old doctor wondered, as he has for almost four decades: Was his poor word recall from the Lyme disease?

When he was a sixth-grader in Lyme, Conn., in 1975, Murray began suffering mysterious joint pain. His complaints, along with similar symptoms seen in his brother and other area children, led doctors to identify a new disease linked to the growing population of blood-sucking ticks in the Northeast. Lyme disease, then called Lyme arthritis, hobbled the young sports enthusiast for much of his school years and helped motivate him to become a doctor.

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