As a concerned resident of CT, I am asking you today to please co-sponsor H.B. 6200, the physician protection bill.
H.B. 6200 will be coming up on the floor for a vote any time in the senate and I ask you to vote favorably for the bill in its entirety, with no changes.
Residents of CT need to be able to have physicians who can treat them and their families for Lyme disease.
This bill acknowledges there is more than one standard of care and allows the physicians to clinically diagnose and treat the patient.
Thank you for supporting Lyme patient's access to care.
Please make sure to include your name address and telephone number.
~~~
You can email and/or call your Connecticut State Senator.
posted
For the late night users ... keep it going!
-------------------- Lou B Posts: 2200 | From Mount Hope, New Jersey, USA | Registered: Oct 2000
| IP: Logged |
Tincup
Honored Contributor (10K+ posts)
Member # 5829
posted
Dear Senator and staff,
Attached is an updated, easy to print version of the Connecticut Lyme Disease Fact Sheet (2009). This should prepare you for decisions you will make concerning your upcoming vote on HB 6200, An Act Concerning the Use of Long-term Antibiotics for the Treatment of Lyme Disease.
There is no doubt that a small organization of sub-speciality doctors have, or will soon be contacting you expressing their opposition to the Lyme disease bill.
They do it all the time, spending countless resources and time fighting patients and physicians in states that dare to question their authority and their terribly tainted medical guideline recommendations.
The same recommendations that have caused countless people to become chronically ill or disabled from what they claim to be an "easily diagnosed and easily treated" disease.
To note, this organization, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, has been investigated and busted by your own Attorney General for illegal practices directly related to their Lyme disease guidelines development process.
Unfortunately, there are only a handful of authors on these guidelines, yet they sometimes get away with claiming to represent the position of all members.
In fact, many of their own members do not practice what the guidelines preach. As volunteer patient advocates, we send patients to them behind the scenes to prevent them from being exposed to the wrath that would be bestowed on them from members of their own group.
You may be told one of their favorite "scare" tactics, that extended antibiotic treatment can cause treatment resistance and the world will be destroyed because of it.
They won't tell you they have testified at public hearings and have published articles stating what they already know to be true, that treating Lyme patients won't cause this problem and their is no documentation to support this notion.
They may mention long term IV antibiotic treatment is risky and people can die from it. There actually has been one reported death of a woman who was being treated for Lyme with IV antibiotics.
What they won't mention is that she fell and broke her IV catheter, which then became infected; her death wasn't caused by having access to Lyme treatment, not at all.
They also won't tell you this poor soul and so many others wouldn't be in the position to require more antibiotics than the 2-4 weeks the IDSA advocates had they been adequately treated in the first place.
They also won't mention that cancer patients, for example, require the same medication delivery system and it is common in cancer patients and many others to have infected catheters.
They won't mention that the majority of patients requiring extended antibiotic treatment are usually put on oral antibiotics to help avoid those risks whenever possible.
Only when orals fail, or in difficult cases, will the experienced treating physician resort to using IV antibiotics.
And yes, they will mention that orals can cause gastrointestinal problems, however, if given probiotics and anti-fungal medications, those problems are rare.
You might consider asking them if they can name any prescription medication used for any disease that does not have potential side effects.
Lyme treating physicians do take precautions and provide the safest and least invasive treatment protocols possible.
They may also elude to Dr. Jones, a CT pediatrician that has been hammered repeated by your medical board in a most disgraceful manner after members of your health department and their IDSA and other cohorts viciously went after him to set an example so others wouldn't step out of line.
The parade they put on, one after the other, while running in to testify against this dear man, is despicable.
Dr. Jones (just turned 80 years old) has successfully treated over 10,000 children with Lyme and tick borne diseases.
Parents come from all over the country and the world to have him treat their sick children, many who have been refused treatment by those who feel they must adhere to the IDSA guidelines.
I have personally sent thousands of children to him myself over the years and have never once heard anything but high praises for his kindness and skill.
In all those years he has never turned a child away for the inability to pay. Somewhere, somehow, the money comes in to help pay for the lab tests for these children and for their treatment.
When you have time, please look into this dreadful situation. Your state has become infamous not only for the Lyme disease connection, but for the out right horrible actions connected to Lyme disease that go unchallenged.
You may also be told that there haven't been any cases of doctors in CT getting tangled up with the CT medical board concerning the over diagnosis or over treatment of Lyme disease (indicating HB 6200 is unnecessary) and that the "fringe" doctors were found to be breaking other rules instead.
The truth is, the doctors who have taken on the hobby of trying to ruin other doctors have done it often enough to know they need to find clerical errors or other non-Lyme related offenses to have them charged without the connection being discovered.
Their little tricks have been pulled so many times in the past they know the best route to take when coming in for the kill.
In fact, your own Dr. Lawrence Zemel (Newington Children's Hospital), a most shameful man in my opinion and proponent of the IDSA guidelines, said in a letter that he would be "happy" to teach your CT health department investigators how to fake having Lyme disease so they could attempt a sting operation on a competing doctor who had been treating very ill Lyme patients, with what Zemel considered to be beyond what he recommended at the time.
Why would doctors behave so badly? At what point does the patients heath care issues become the focus here?
As the Attorney General discovered, some of the staunch IDSA followers have patents on the Lyme tests and their guidelines recommend before treating that not one, but TWO positive tests should be obtained. Cha-ching!
The tests they recommend have been proven by John's Hopkins to miss 75% of those who are infected, but they certainly can be profitable to those focusing on the money aspects. (See attached)
If patients are allowed to receive additional courses of antibiotics and they happen to recover, the ones previously withholding treatment while profiting from this arrangement can possibly be involved in legal actions, or shall I say MORE legal actions.
Therefore, they continue to fight for their reputations, licenses and pocket books.
If they are discredited in their field or have legal actions against them, they could loose billions in future research dollars for themselves and their institutions, not to mention their jobs, their homes, their possessions, etc.
There are a number of other reasons, but for now you probably have some idea of what has been going on in the Lyme wars.
We have chronically ill patients vs. a handful of discredited doctors with dollar signs in their eyes who are fighting to save their _______, well, you fill in the blank.
If after reviewing the attached documents you see there might be something in what the chronically ill patients are saying, please cosponsor the bill and support it vigorously. Our lives and our futures are in your hands.
Thank you for considering our plight and the welfare of our precious children.
Sincerely,
PS. Some day I'd love to tell you about the way they have tried to dismiss the existence of a disease and the people who have it; one which they took lots of money to study and have documented over the years.
posted
This is the letter I submit to Senator Fasano last evening:
Dear Senator Fasano,
I wanted to write you in regards to your vote on HB 6200. As a East Haven resident who has suffered with Lyme Disease and Babesiosis (another tick borne infection), for the last 2 years, I wanted to explain to you how important this bill is.
Since contracting Lyme disease here in my backyard in 2007, I have been to roughly 11 different doctors. I was tested for everything from Multiple Sclerosis to Parkinson's disease because I failed to develop the typical bullseye rash, this is despite my positive blood tests for Lyme and Babesiosis. Several of the doctors I had seen actually told me that the tests could possibly be wrong, even though I had many of the classic neurological signs. I was failed by my primary care provider here in East Haven as he didn't even prescribe the right medicine for Babesiosis! This was quite a wake up call for someone who was 39 and had never suffered any medical issues previously.
I started to do some research and was astonished at the controversy that surrounds treatment. I found one doctor here in Connecticut who was the only one who would listen. She treated me for several months with 2 different types of medication. For the first time in months, I was beginning to feel like myself, although not 100%. I saw this doctor for several months who then said I must be cured and stopped the meds. She was scared to treat me longer than that for fear of repercussions, even though I was getting better! At that point I realized I would need to seek further treatment out of state. I am actually seeing a doctor in New Jersey to this day. It's ridiculous that I should have to do this, but my health is paramount to me.
I cannot express enough to you that I am not an individual who believes that Lyme disease is the cause of all the world's ills, but in my case, it has been. I have been able to return to work recently and resume my life. I have actually had to get IV antibiotics to return to normal. I thank God for my doctor in New Jersey who sees patients such as myself. There are patients in my doctor's office from all over the country, because of doctors failure/fear to treat Lyme.
In case you do not know, the Lyme disease spirochete is the first cousin of Syphillis, except that it is known as its "smart cousin." This is due to the fact that it can hide and bury in deep tissue and cross the blood brain barrier, to which many antibiotics don't cross. Also, the average treatment time for Syphillis is 18 months, but yet most doctors will only treat for 3 weeks. That doesn't kill it on it's growth cycle which is every 4 weeks. So in many long established cases, 3 weeks does nothing.
I apologize in advance for the length of my letter and if you have gotten this far, I thank you for reading it. Please support HB 6200, many lives of Connecticut residents depends on the outcome of this. With Connecticut being known as ground zero for this disease, let us be the state that others follow to provide access to care regarding this insideous bacteria.
Posts: 157 | From connecticut | Registered: Feb 2007
| IP: Logged |
Tincup
Honored Contributor (10K+ posts)
Member # 5829
posted
OH TG...
I hate to say YES!!!! and jump up and down after reading this ...
Because the story breaks my heart and I don't want to have you suffer or struggle...
BUT..
The LETTER is 1,000% wonderful!
Well written!
I actually didn't know anyone who could hang in the pits with Tony Stewart would be this smart.
I could hardly finish typing that line cause I was lauging too hard.
You know I am just kidding!
THANK YOU for taking time to write such a touching.. and STRONG powerful letter!
I have heard these letters ARE making a difference.... so good for you!!!
The Lyme Disease Network is a non-profit organization funded by individual donations. If you would like to support the Network and the LymeNet system of Web services, please send your donations to:
The
Lyme Disease Network of New Jersey 907 Pebble Creek Court,
Pennington,
NJ08534USA http://www.lymenet.org/
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[lol]](graemlins/lol.gif)
![[group hug]](graemlins/grouphug.gif)
![[kiss]](graemlins/kissing.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic