Her lost summer; Lyme disease sidelined School Committee member for weeks
By Shawn Regan , Staff Writer Eagle-Tribune
HAVERHILL - School Committee member Erin Francescone was missing in action for most of the summer.
She was a no-show at school board meetings in July and August. It's unlikely you ran into her at the grocery or a local restaurant either.
She returned to the School Committee two weeks ago but wants parents and other community members to know she did not spend the summer vacationing in Europe, or anywhere else for that matter. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The unusual circumstances that led to her summer hiatus from Haverhill school business began sometime in mid-June.
Around the end of that month, Francescone, 38, began feeling especially tired and achy. She remembers feeling pieces of skin hanging from her body behind her knee and on the bottom of her back. But she paid little attention to the skin flaps, figuring they were in-grown hairs or some other kind of irritation, she said.
The pieces of raised skin disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared, but her lethargy worsened. Francescone, an assistant principal at the Ferryway School in Malden who oversaw a summer program there through the middle of July, began to have flu-like symptoms including chills, fever and vomiting.
About a week into July, a quarter-sized, bull's-eye red bump surrounded by a bruise-like rash appeared on Francescone's lower back where the raised skin had been. She was suffering severe pain in her joints. She decided she must have been bitten by an insect, most likely a spider, she said.
"Any pressure on my body was painful. Even the bed sheets on top of my skin hurt," said Francescone, recalling the experience on a recent afternoon while relaxing in her backyard with her husband, Dan, and their sons, Jack, 3, and Tyler, 2.
"The aches and pains and exhaustion weren't going away or getting any better," she said. "I thought maybe the sore from whatever bit me had become infected."
In early July, Francescone was diagnosed with Lyme disease - an arthritis-like illness spread by tick bites. It is so-named because it first began appearing in Old Lyme, Conn., in the 1950s. Francescone's skin flaps were likely leftover pieces of swollen ticks that bit her at a cookout she attended around June 20 at her aunt's house in Middleton, she said.
"I'm not someone who hikes or is a woodsman, so I was surprised that it was Lyme disease," she said. "But I remember sitting in the grass at the cookout. And they have lots of deer around, so that's when it must have happened."
Francescone was given a 10-day protocol of antibiotics that quickly cleared her rash. She began to feel better almost immediately but said her energy level has yet to return to normal.
"People with Lyme disease don't always have the rash and are often misdiagnosed for years because it usually doesn't show up in a blood test until several months after you start showing symptoms," she said. "I was lucky."
Francescone said she was feeling good enough to attend the School Committee's August meeting. That's when another unusual illness intervened: Her mother was diagnosed Aug. 1 with whooping cough, an infectious disease that causes uncontrollable coughing.
Francescone said she was contacted by the city's public health nurse, who asked her not to attend any public meetings and to stay away from public places until she cleared the incubation period for the disease.
Francescone's husband and their two sons were given medicine just in case they had caught the disease from Francescone's mother. But Francescone's doctor chose not to treat her because she is allergic to many kinds of medicine, she said.
"The Haverhill nurse was all in a tizzy because my doctor hadn't prescribed me anything to avoid a possible outbreak of whooping cough," she said. "The nurse asked me to stay inside through the incubation period to make sure I didn't start showing symptoms."
All cases of whooping cough are reported and investigated by state health officials, who also contact local health officials, Francescone said.
Francescone said she contacted the School Department and decided to skip the School Committee's August meeting.
"The last thing I wanted was a headline in the newspaper: 'Francescone infects School Committee' or 'Francescone puts school officials' health at risk,'" said Francescone, who was elected to the School Committee in 2005 and is halfway through a four-year term.
-------------------- There is no wealth but life. -John Ruskin
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