There was a two page article about Dr. Harvey
in Sunday's Dallas Morning News. It was in the "Texas Living" section. Hopefully one of you more computer literates can find the link. It talked about a man that was diagnosed with ALS and saw Dr. Harvey.

The man is, of course, improving on abx. It also has an article about Dr. Harvey himself. At the end of the article, it said that Dr. Harvey is seeing patients again. That could be some good news for some of you exes

Take Care.....Terri

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08:17 PM CDT on Monday, May 2, 2005

By BRYAN WOOLLEY / The Dallas Morning News

MULLIN, Texas - Charlie Smith is thinking about what he might do with the rest of his life.

"I don't want to go back to trucking," he says. "I want to be home every night to see my babies."

There are ranches for troubled boys in the Central Texas hills where Charlie lives. Maybe he could work at one of those, he says, or some place like them. Maybe he could be some kind of counselor.

"I'd like to tell those kids my story and what I've been through," he says. "Maybe I could help somebody who's wanting to give up."

Talking about the future is a strange new thing for Charlie. He wasn't supposed to have one.

In December 2002, doctors at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas told him he might have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often called Lou Gehrig's disease. It weakens the body's muscles and then paralyzes them. It kills its victim, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but always. In June 2003, the doctors reported that the diagnosis "has been confirmed."

TOM FOX/DMN
By last fall, Charlie Smith had the strength to attend a hometown football game against rival Zephyr with his wife, R�my, and son Charlie Jr. Charlie, 28, is making a comeback from a motor neuron disease. ALS usually strikes people who are 50 or older. Charlie was only 25. The Dallas doctors said that he was the youngest ALS victim they had ever diagnosed and that young ALS victims usually die faster than older ones. The doctors predicted three to six months for Charlie, maybe a year.

"To tell somebody they have only so long to live, that really knocks a person's spirits down," Charlie says now.

Charlie first told his story to The Dallas Morning News in January 2004. He and his friends talked about what he used to be: the star of Mullin High School's six-man football team, its homecoming king, its Christmas prince, 6-foot-4 and handsome, strong-bodied and strong-willed, the leader among the little town's young men.

He and his wife, R�my, had a 2-year-old daughter, Kyra, and 9-month-old Charlie Jr. Before his illness, Charlie drove a tractor-trailer rig, hauling stone from Mullin to home builders and landscapers in Dallas, San Antonio and Houston. He was on the road nearly all the time.

His calamity began one spring day in 2002 when he stepped out of his rig, lost his balance and fell on his back. His truck driver friends laughed, but the fall was the first symptom of his illness. It signaled the horrible change that was about to happen to Charlie.

At the time of the 2004 interview, Charlie had outlived the doctors' expectations, but he was sinking. His muscles were shrinking. His speech was slow and slurred. His fingers were stiff and curled. He had trouble breathing and swallowing.

R�my dreaded driving the 30 miles to Comanche to buy groceries. She feared what she might face when she got home. "I was scared to death that I was going to be the one to ... you know ..."

To find Charlie dead.

DallasNews.com/extra

Doctor devised treatment to heal himself

02/22/2004: The fight of his life

Resources:
* International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society
* ALS Association
R�my thought of calling a hospice to help him through. Charlie was angry and defiant and stubborn, and sometimes depressed. He vowed that, despite the impossible odds and the doctors' expectations, he would recover.

Many Morning News readers were moved by Charlie's courage. Their interest led to the establishment of a medical fund for him, administered through a church in nearby Comanche. They contributed $16,000.

A reader phoned the Smiths and told them of Dr. William T. Harvey in Houston, who was treating her husband and other patients for symptoms like Charlie's and seemed to be having some success.

Charlie and R�my made an appointment and drove to Houston, three hours from Mullin, to meet the doctor.

Charlie says, "It was like a big weight was lifted off of us when Dr. Harvey said, 'Well, we can help you.' Before that, we had no chance. Before that, we were running down a one-way track."

The doctor

Dr. Harvey is 67 years old, a graduate of the Air Force Academy and a retired NASA aerospace physician. During his 23-year career as an Air Force officer, he served as a biomedical engineer and a flight surgeon, and later in clinical aerospace medicine and in space medicine research at the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine. After his retirement, he managed medical facilities for NASA and for a Department of Energy nuclear facility and for Lockheed.

His r�sum� says he's a clinician in general medicine, but all the nearly 900 patients he says he has treated in the past four or five years have had symptoms similar to Charlie's.

His board certifications are in aerospace medicine, not internal medicine or epidemiology. But in space medicine, he says, NASA physicians weren't able to depend on medical books, because the books they needed hadn't been written yet. Now he's working without books again, he says, because what he's doing is new.

His theory is outside the mainstream of standard diagnosis and treatment. Briefly and simplistically stated, it's this: Many patients who are diagnosed with ALS, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, chronic Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and other motor neuron diseases actually are victims of a bacteriological infection that can be cured or at least alleviated with massive doses of certain antibiotics.

The bacillus is Borrelia burgdorferi. Dr. Harvey says it's present in the blood of millions of people around the world, often from birth. It's relatively harmless, he says, until something triggers it to attack the nerves that activate the muscles.

Its presence in the blood can't be detected by the standard tests that most labs and hospitals use. According to Dr. Harvey, only two labs in the U.S. - one in Florida and one in California - are equipped to find and identify it.

He hasn't done clinical trials to test his theories, nor has he been published in peer-reviewed medical journals. Many doctors are skeptical that bacteria could be the cause of a motor neuron disease.

After the California lab discovered Borrelia burgdorferi in Charlie's blood, Dr. Harvey prescribed massive doses of antibiotics, some taken orally, some administered intravenously through a catheter in Charlie's chest.

Dr. Harvey has seen Charlie three times since his initial visit. He keeps in touch with the Smiths mostly by phone.

Charting progress

During the second office visit, last September, Dr. Harvey walked Charlie through all his symptoms, to determine whether any improvement had been made.

"I can get in and out of the bathtub," Charlie said. "I can take a shower by myself. My balance has come back. I can shampoo my hair without losing my balance."

Charlie's fingers were still curled, but he could straighten them a little more than before. He said he still had headaches. His ability to swallow had improved. "I eat steak every night," he said.

Charlie Smith shows Dr. William T. Harvey how he can lift and extend his leg as his wife, R�my, watches. He had no pain in his legs, but some in his lower back. He no longer had difficulty breathing at night. He had regained the weight he had lost. His muscles, which had been shrinking, were coming back."

"Are you irritable?" Dr. Harvey asked.

"Sometimes I wake up in the morning and just want to get out of bed and run. And I get kind of angry."

"Are you depressed?"

"No."

"This is all good," Dr. Harvey said. "You're changing. I wish it were faster. It may be a longer journey than we thought it might be. We may be talking about a couple of years, or it could be that a sudden turn is just around the corner. We're getting somewhere with the disease. I think our course is the right one. You guys are fighters. I know you're going to gut it out."

Six months later, the slow improvement continues.

Charlie's chronic fatigue is gone. He can raise his arms above his head and lift his feet an inch or two off the floor. His shoulder muscles are filling out. He can rise from his wheelchair without help, and can stand erect, although sometimes a little wobbly. His speech is still slurred, but much clearer than it has been in years. His fingers are uncurling, slowly. He's beginning physical rehabilitation sessions in Comanche.

Still a struggle

While Charlie is improving, his illness has brought suffering to R�my as well. She has lost weight. She's exhausted. Taking care of her husband and two rambunctious small children around the clock have worn her down.

Charlie has been unable to earn a paycheck for almost three years. The Social Security disability check on which his family lives can't stretch through the month. Bill collectors harass her.

"R�my has been through a lot of responsibilities that a lot of people wouldn't take on," Charlie says. "She has held her head up through it all. I've learned to appreciate the little things. The one good thing that has come out of all this is the time I've been at home with my kids."

R�my, 24, laughs. "He wouldn't have ever known that Little Charlie has to have strawberry milk and Kyra loves chocolate milk," she says.

Kyra is 3 now. Little Charlie is a strapping 19-month-old. "They keep my spirits up," Charlie says. "I ain't got time to feel bad. If none of this had happened, I'd probably still be driving that truck, and I wouldn't have near the bond I have with these kids now. This is something to be proud of."

So when Charlie goes to work again, he wants to come home at night. His voice fills with energy and a kind of joy when he talks about that future day.

"At one time," he says, "I thought I was gone, that I was going away. But I'm not going nowhere no time."

R�my's voice trembles. "The other day, I looked at him and I could see Charlie again."

E-mail [email protected]

I'm very glad this man is getting help. I hope the article spurs others to get the proper help.

I think it's great that the focus was on "Borrelia burgdorferi"... as opposed to referring to it as Lyme. "Lyme" gets a bad rap sometimes!

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oops!
Lymetutu

 

The second one is titled "Dr. Harvey devised treatment plan to heal himself"

It says at the end of the article that he closed his Houston office in Sept. but is now seeing new patients again. It even gives a telephone number.

I know a lot of folks were disappointed when he stopped practicing but I, for one, am glad to see another LLMD around these parts again!
 

Dallas Morning News, The (TX)

May 1, 2005

Dr. Harvey devised treatment plan to heal himself

Author: BRYAN WOOLLEY; Staff Writer

Edition: SECOND
Section: TEXAS LIVING
Page: 11E

Article Text:

Dr. William T. Harvey says he once was a victim of the debilitating disease for which he has been treating Charlie Smith. Or something like it. It was in 1987 in California, he says, just before his 50th birthday, that his life "kind of fell through the roof."

"It was all pain, all brain fog," he says. "I couldn't think anymore. I had to quit my job. I went back to my house in San Antonio and figured that I had a fatal disease and nobody could figure out what it was."

He says he recovered after giving himself massive doses of antibiotics. Another doctor who, like Charlie, had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, says Dr. Harvey successfully treated him with the same method.

But Dr. Harvey's methods are outside the medical mainstream, and many experts are skeptical of his theories.

"One of the things that makes modern medicine such a powerful thing is that there is general consensus on issues and evidence," says Dr. Justin D. Radolf, a professor of medicine at the University of Connecticut and an authority on the bacterium Dr. Harvey is treating. "Dr. Harvey appears to be far beyond anything that's evidence-based. He's just basically making up his own rules."

Dr. Harvey blames a bacteriu! m, Borellia burgdorferia, for the symptoms he experienced. He says patients like him may be diagnosed with a range of illnesses - chronic Lyme disease, Gulf War syndrome, fibromyalgia or Agent Orange syndrome. Some, he says, are diagnosed with ALS or multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's. Some are told that their problem isn't physical, that their pain is only in their minds.

Heal thyself

Dr. Harvey believed he had chronic fatigue syndrome, a vaguely defined malady that many doctors didn't believe was real. In 1999, he attended a medical conference on Lyme disease, which causes similar symptoms, although he says he was almost certain Lyme wasn't his problem.

At the conference, he learned of the use of oral antibiotics in treating Lyme disease and decided to treat himself with "high, high doses" of them to see whether they might help his condition, too.

"Little by little, I came out of the disease. Almost," he says. He began taking antibiotics in even lar! ger doses through a catheter and says he achieved complete recovery.

His wife, Pat, had experienced similar symptoms and had been "sick as a dog," in bed for 12 years. She remains on antibiotics. "She's mostly well and highly functional," Dr. Harvey says.

In 2000, Dr. Pat Salvato, head of Diversified Medical Practices in Houston, invited Dr. Harvey to join her clinic, a chronic fatigue syndrome practice. Eventually, he says, he identified Borellia and another bacterium, Babesia, as agents of the illness.

Of the 900 patients that Dr. Harvey has treated over the past four years, he says, about 300 have finished therapy, and their symptoms haven't returned.

His star patient is another physician, David Martz, an oncologist-hematologist from Colorado Springs, Colo. Dr. Martz, now 64, was diagnosed with ALS in May 2003 and had to retire from his practice.

"I had been in the Colorado Springs medical community for 30 years," he says in a phone interview. "I was pretty well-known and respected in that community. Every expe! rt in the community was involved in my care, trying to figure out what was going on. I was hospitalized for two weeks. At the end of that two weeks, they weren't sure what I had, but they thought I probably had early ALS."

A friend of Dr. Martz's son saw a newspaper article in Maryland about Dr. Harvey and his work. One of Dr. Martz's colleagues knew Dr. Harvey and put them in touch. In January, Dr. Martz was put on high-dosage intravenous antibiotic treatment.

His symptoms are remarkably similar to Charlie Smith's. But for reasons Dr. Harvey says he doesn't know, Dr. Martz's recovery has been quicker. After six months of intensive treatment, Dr. Martz says he was back to 75 percent to 80 percent of the person he once was.

Now, Dr. Harvey says, a year after Dr. Martz began the antibiotic therapy, a neurologist who specializes in the disease has declared him "symptom free" of ALS.

Skepticism

Dr. Radolf says he's skeptical of Dr. Harvey's theorie! s linking the Lyme disease bacterium with other ailments. Dr. Radolf h as done extensive research in Lyme disease and diseases caused by Borrelia burgdorferi and other bacteria.

"Lyme disease does have neurological syndromes," he says. "But regarding neurological diseases such as ALS and MS, I think very few people in the neurological community would accept that these are due to Lyme disease," or Borellia burgdorferi. I don't believe there is any evidence that real, properly diagnosed ALS is caused by Borellia or that it is treatable with antibiotics."

Dr. Harvey says his work has not been a scientific study. "I'm just treating patients," he says. "And I treat only one kind of disease - this bacterium, Borellia."

Sharing his knowledge

Dr. Harvey has moved to his Del Rio, Texas, vacation home, where he spends most of his time writing about Borellia burgdorferi and Babesia and organizing a database to be shared with other physicians. He closed his Houston office in September, and except for Charlie and a few others who wer! e diagnosed with ALS, his patients were referred to other physicians. But the afflicted call, and the doctor is seeing new patients again. (He can be reached through his assistant, Glenda Castillo, at 830-774-4094.)

"I'm starting to understand it, finally," Dr. Harvey says. "So are a lot of other docs. I think this thing is just about to pop to the surface."

E-mail [email protected]

RESOURCES

International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society - ilads.org

ALS Association - alsa.org
 

He treated a member of our group last month who was diagnosed with ALS a year ago. He tested positive for lyme and was on his second week of abx. When he started abx he could not even open his mouth and could not move most of his body.

He was was beginning to be able to open and shut his mouth and talk more easily and move his arms and legs a little. Last Saturday his wife found him dead in his chair.

I , we don't blame Harvey. He was just too weak to with stand the treatment, I guess. Thank God Harvey was willing to try and he would have gotten well if he had lived.

I guess the reason I am posting this is to stress how important it is to be followed up on . If you're as sick as he was, you must have a Dr. in your area that will oversee you and make sure nothing bad is happening to your body.

He died from heart failure and it probably could have been prevented I think if he had been watched more closely.

My dad has congestive heart failure and his complaints the day before he died were a dead give away, if you know the symptoms. It is vital that we are watched closely by someone who knows when we start treatments.
 

IMO, all the care in the world cannot save some people who are already at the edge of the cliff when treatment begins. The fault, if any, comes from the fact that the poor guy didn't start getting treatment until so late. How many docs did he go thru trying to get help before he got to a lyme doc? Those are the people to fault. It is the lateness of treatment, not the person treating that is to blame.

The other thing is that there have been several deaths in people who either were doctors or who had everything possible in the way of good care, but the disease is serious and does damage, sometimes fatal.

This is the point, that it is a serious disease, and when caught at the very late stage, sometimes is not reversible, certainly not the damage already done.

Please pass along our sympathies to his family.
 

[B]I was hoping to read about the specific abx and dosages Dr H was using for Charlie..Is this info anywhere? thanks kt