Kinda like having taco sauce from NY CITY!

WHAT?

Ok..

In the past two years.. the highest cases of Maleria were from..

NY City- 352 cases

CA- 264 cases

TX- 187 cases

FL- 178 cases

MD- 142 cases

Now.. there were 352 cases of Maleria in NY CITY...

BUT... only 106 cases in NY STATE. The whole state!

Do you think they are misdiagnosing Maleria in NY CITY... just like in PA?

It IS the cousin to Babesiosis.

What do YOU think?

i'm sure most of these cases are caught out of nyc and reported by doctors in nyc.

otherwise it would be on the local news in ny ALL the time....
 

Good thinking zip. I missed that one BIG time. Glad you were there with a brain to help me!

Another question... since you are on a roll...

I always thought Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever was "caught" in the Rocky Mountain areas.

I guess looking back, it is about as dumb as saying Lyme can only affect those in Lyme, CT. But hey.. I am NOT a brain surgeon!

But.. my thought.. or impression was..

Maleria was nearly always found in more tropical regions.

We still have a number of cases.. some in rural areas of NJ, NY, PA, MD, etc... that are kinda far north for what I thought they should be.

Do "our" mosquitoes carry it here? My mother had Maleria when she was a child.. but she was from the south. Maybe that is why I "assumed" it was found mostly in southern regions?

Would love your thoughts on that.

Thanks!!

just a guess????

stanford univ released an interesting report this week linking the extinction of birds with a change in ecodynamics and a rise infectious diseases.

they specifically pointed to the death of the passenger pigeon leading to the rise in lyme disease. food for thought.

i posted a link to the article :
http://flash.lymenet.org/ubb/Forum4/HTML/002545.html

but if you google it you can find out more.

wish we had happier, snappier things to diatribe about
 

I don't know yet what to think about it, but ...

You have many of my symptoms, you suspected me once to have Lyme, Bart and Babs and I think you were right.

You said: "My mother had Maleria when she was a child.."

Guess what: My mother also had Malaria when she was a teenager... And I think I was probably born with Lyme etc.

Coincidence or not? - Strange in any case!

Gabrielle
 

My own brother is a case in point. He went to the hospital and was sent home, it was "just the flu". After about 3 tries they finally admitted him. He was green. They flew him to another hospital because they did not know how to treat malaria.

It was a very close call, but he survived. He has been back to Africa several times since. Now he carries the Malaria medicine with him whenever he is in the US. In all other countries he is safe, they actually treat the disease. Here they send you home to die.

BTW malaria does not cure lyme. I was eaten alive by mosquitoes in Nairobi Kenya back in 1989. I was quite sick for a while, but recovered as did the Lyme disease. I was taking the anti malarial drug. On the bright side I did feel better for a while.

I just returned from the Philippines. It is a tropical paradise! No one got sick. We only ate cooked food. I fell in love with Mango shakes. Now I look out the frosty window at several inches of snow.

There are a handfull of cases of Malaria in the US that origonate here. The likely cause is a mosquito bite carring it from one person to another. Usually they is a cluster of 2 to 4 victims all living within a block or two of each other. This has happended in NYC, VA beach, and Florida.
 

Malaria! Funny you should mention it.

Since you bring it up, I have some questions of my own and would be grateful for any and all learned replies.

It's actually a topic that's been on my mind of late because of all I'm learning about Babs.

I've been wondering about the possibility of gestational transmission. I know I'm not allowed to donate blood....

I caught malaria during an epidemic while living in Africa as a VERY healthy, athletic teenager. This was despite taking anti-malarial meds for 6 weeks prior, throughout my stay and 6 weeks following my return.

All of my American counterparts (also on anti-malarials) got quite ill (like a bad body/fever/headache flu) for about 3+ days/week. A few local chidren died.

I just got a horrible headache and was a bit achey but was otherwise up and about. Felt pretty smug about the strength of my immune system at the time as I recall, too.

After my return home, besides being treated for all manner of parasites, I felt pretty good. I was again wrapped up in training, pushing myself as hard as I could 24/7.

I had just stopped the anti-malarial meds when one night during practice, I felt very hot, exhausted and my face was bright red. Not neccesarily so unusual; except this time, it was really bad and it didn't subside. It got much worse.

By the time we got home I was shaking all over and I spent days in bed in total delerium, with a sustained temps of over 105. I lost more than 10 pounds in sweat. My mattress went in the garbage.

It was truly an out of body experience. And just to give me my just desserts, I was much sicker than my buddies had been.

Nasty little bug.

Definately kicked my smug little behind. And truth be told, I was never been able to get back to my former feeling of physical invincibility.

Never went to the hospital either with parents from the old "builds character" school.

During a recent appointment with an LLMD, I anecdotally mentioned having had malaria and asked about the similarities to Babs.

When he discovered I had never been TREATED, he got this flash of alarm on his face. So I said, "What?! Why?"

He just shook his head and changed the subject.

So what the heck does THAT mean?!

When we were in Africa, nobody got "treated"; everybody just rode it out, eventually got better and promised never to donate blood.

Obviously,I can say for sure that both my kids have gotten bad "flu" symptoms. I mean, what kid hasn't? Neither have experienced anything like the fever I had.

Just wondering if anyone out there happens to know anything about this critter.

Unless I hear I should be doing something else, I'm putting it all in the "Oh, well, *#&*! happens!" category and moseying on down the trail.

All that said, I tend to think Zip is probably right on the money with the rates of malaria; most of the places mentioned seem to be close to major international airports(I'm assuming that the MD cases are coming into Wash, DC?).

The bird migration pattern is an interesting theory, too.

peace,
andie, JC & Julie
 

Malaria drugs are used to treat Babesia, is is a weaker cousin of malaria. They used to be one in the same as malaria actually means "bad air". It used to mean any illness you got from visiting swamps where the air is "bad".

Babesia is considered not fatal so it is sometimes not treated. However there is growing evedence that a blood parasite will make you far more likely to develop a chronic illness and more likely to relapse after treatment for bacterial infections.