Nancy2
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This appeared in our Sunday paper this morning:
BY BOB KERR [email protected] Lyme disease is as controversial as it is painful. The tick-borne disease is often misunderstood, misdiagnosed or missed altogether. Sufferers have been told they have multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, shingles. Some have been told they have Alzheimer’s. And some have been told it’s all in their heads and they should go home and get over it. In Rhode Island, where people are too familiar with Lyme, the disease has its own Facebook page — “LymeTimeInRI.” For many, Lyme disease has meant long-term, debilitating pain that spreads though the body. It has meant extreme fatigue and sometimes confusion and sometimes brain damage. And, in some cases, it has meant a maddening journey from one doctor to another to find effective diagnosis and treatment. There are turf battles within the medical community over what treatment is most effective. And nowhere is the dispute more pronounced or heated than in the walk-in clinic in *city* run by Dr. G and his wife, ***, a registered nurse. Sufferers find their way to *G*, often on the recommendation of friends. Some of his patients feel so passionately about what he has done for them that they are circulating a petition that urges the state Department of Health to “Stop The Harrassment of our lyme Doc.” The petition, signed by more than 1,000 people, states: “Please ask the R.I. Department of Health to dismiss bogus claims against the Lyme Doctor [***] in our community. He is one of only a few docs willing to treat long term Lyme disease.” “I swear he saved my life,” said Wendy Manchester Ibrahim, a health educator who lives in East Greenwich. Ibrahim says she went to *G* on the recommendation of a friend after finding no real solution to her illness. She says she got sick about three years ago with flu-like symptoms and migraines. About a year ago, she started having involuntary movement in her limbs. “It was like I was belly-dancing.” She went to the hospital, where, she says, a triage nurse told her she had Lyme disease. Previous diagnoses had included stress-related illness and “old-fashioned Freudian hysteria.” *G* put her on a course of intravenous antibiotics and also recommended seeing a neurologist. She is getting better, she says. *G* understands antibiotics and herbal medicine and makes adjustments in treatment as her condition improves. He is a general practitioner, a doctor for 33 years who likes to say he learned medicine in the trenches. He also likes to say he’s a good diagnostician. He sees all kinds of medical problems come through the door of his clinic, and this year he is expecting to see more people than ever with Lyme disease, something he already sees hundreds of times a year. “The deer population has exploded,” he said. He expects Jamestown to be particularly hard hit. And while he treats patients, he wonders about his future. He wonders if, after 33 years as a doctor, he will be brought down by a dispute over what is best for those patients. I called the Department of Health to ask about the complaints made against *G* two years ago. I also asked about an email sent by Dr. Nicole Alexander, an infectious disease doctor, which actually solicited complaints against *G* in an effort to build a case for “mismanagement.” A spokesperson for the department said there could be no comment due to confidentiality. There is no one cure for Lyme. Its impact is far too varied. *G* often prescribes a long-term series of antibiotics and that is apparently what has brought him into conflict with the state medical establishment. But Rhode Island law is very specific on the subject. Under the Lyme Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Act, “No physician is subject to disciplinary action by the board solely for prescribing, administering, or dispensing long-term antibiotic therapy for a therapeutic purpose for a patient clinically diagnosed with Lyme disease.” So, *G* treats Lyme patients in accordance with state law. He had been treating them for more than 10 years when, in January 2012, the first of a half-dozen complaints was made. Mrs G remembers the day in November last year when she and her husband and their lawyer met with a Department of Health doctor and lawyer to discuss the complaints. They carried a pile of letters from satisfied patients with them. But the complaints never came up. Instead, *G* was accused of lousy record-keeping. It had not been mentioned before. *G* acknowledged that his handwriting is probably not the most legible in American medicine, but he says his records are complete and up to date. Health Department officials told him to take an expensive course in record-keeping offered in Colorado or agree to have his record-keeping monitored. He refused. “We’re still in limbo,” mrs G* says. This is difficult to understand. There is no one set treatment for Lyme disease, and Rhode Island law allows for the one sometimes applied by Dr. G. He says he uses it because it works, and a whole bunch of people signed that petition in support of what he does. Could in-fighting in the Rhode Island medical community actually restrict a doctor’s freedom to follow legal and professional guidelines? “It saddens me,” said Ibrahim. “He’s really the only person in the state willing to put himself out there and serve us. He has a big heart. I hope there’ll be more like him in Rhode Island.”
***Edited name of LLMD***
[ 06-29-2014, 11:35 PM: Message edited by: Lymetoo ]
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