Queens chick fixed tick glitch for hicks in sticks.
Still, I didn't go to "the country" on my summer vacation. I stayed right here in Queens.
I won't go anywhere near where the deer and the antibiotics roam.
Because where there is Bambi, there is a little monster called a Lyme tick.
According to Assemblywoman Nettie Mayersohn (D-Flushing) - who co-authored a 2005 State Assembly bill that demanded HMOs and the State Office of Professional Medical Conduct stop harassing doctors who treat Lyme disease as a chronic illness - New York State has the highest number of Lyme disease cases in the nation.
So if I have to spend the rest of my life dodging killer traffic on Queens Blvd. as opposed to frolicking in the deer-dotted meadows of "the country," I will consider myself one lucky city slicker.
See, I have a niece who has chronic Lyme disease. Cara was bitten by a dirty little deer tick in Rhinebeck, N.Y., when she was 7.
She's 26 now and the last two decades of her life have been a living hell of pain and suffering, mega doses of antibiotics, wars with bloodless HMOs, alternative medicine treatments, lethargy, scary weight fluctuations from drug bloating and loss of appetite, and an almost spiritual quest for lasting relief.
"It took us six years to get Cara diagnosed," says Betsy Jacaruso, Cara's mother, a well-known Hudson Valley painter who also is a chronic Lyme sufferer. "Some doctors don't even believe in chronic Lyme disease because it doesn't always show up positive in a blood test because when Lyme mutates, it can change structure into cyst forms and hide deep in the immune cells. But simple stress can make it flare."
As a child, Cara's chronic Lyme disease often forced her to leave school mid-term. This incurable disease also has affected her adult working life, as some days she is simply unable to get out of bed because the infection caused by the spiral-shaped bacteria called spirochetes causes severe headaches, fatigue, pain, insomnia, nausea, general malaise.
Chronic Lyme disease can leave some people completely disabled.
And, of course, instead of trying to help these victims through a life of despair, the HMOs, those towering institutions dedicated to bottomless greed, have spent millions on lobbyists and lawyers who pressured the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct to harass doctors who treat Lyme disease as a chronic illness.
"I represent Flushing, where we don't have a huge Lyme problem," says Mayersohn, a member of the Assembly health committee. "But I had an intern who went off to graduate school and the work world; then I received a very disturbing letter from her saying she'd developed chronic Lyme disease."
Mayersohn says the disease had attacked the young woman's central nervous system, her ability to think clearly and her memory. "She had deteriorated from a beautiful, bright young woman with her whole life in front of her to a point where she could not function," says Mayersohn. "She also told me about the whole debate about Lyme disease and how it was affecting her ability to find a doctor to treat the disease."
So this city slicker state rep took her Queens street smarts and looked into the upstate Lyme situation and found that the Office of Professional Medical Conduct was targeting those doctors who treated chronic Lyme victims with prolonged antibiotic treatments.
"One 27-year-old woman, named Lia, was so afflicted that she was wheelchair-bound," says Mayersohn. "They wanted to put her into a nursing home. But once she received long-term antibiotic treatments, she was able to get out of the wheelchair. Today she rides a bicycle because, obviously, prolonged antibiotic treatments work. But the insurance companies didn't want to pay the costs so they brought pressure on the OPMC and one doctor actually lost his license."
So the outraged gentlewoman from Queens co-authored her legislation which passed the state Assembly and the state Senate. Gov. Pataki, dedicated to protect and serve the insurance companies, vetoed it.
"But he did have the state Department of Health send out a June 15, 2005, memo demanding that the harassment of Lyme doctors cease," says Mayersohn. "It did. Still, that one doctor never got his license back."
Mayersohn says if the harassment of Lyme doctors begins anew, she'd consider drafting new legislation for Spitzer's consideration. Amazing that it takes a legislator from Queens to spearhead change to a raging upstate health problem.
"But it's no different than my legislation on AIDS and stroke victims," says Mayersohn. "I'm not a doctor but I have common sense. If a woman suffering from chronic Lyme disease can go from a wheelchair to a bicycle on prolonged antibiotic treatment, it must mean it works."
But it still won't get me to leave Queens for tick country.
[ 28. August 2007, 08:15 PM: Message edited by: ldfighter ]
Posts: 621 | From US | Registered: Jun 2006
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CaliforniaLyme
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
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posted
VERY GOOD PIECE!!!!!!!!!!!!
-------------------- There is no wealth but life. -John Ruskin
All truth goes through 3 stages: first it is ridiculed: then it is violently opposed: finally it is accepted as self evident. - Schopenhauer Posts: 5639 | From Aptos CA USA | Registered: Apr 2005
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CaliforniaLyme
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
Member # 7136
posted
VERY GOOD PIECE!!!!!!!!!!!!
-------------------- There is no wealth but life. -John Ruskin
All truth goes through 3 stages: first it is ridiculed: then it is violently opposed: finally it is accepted as self evident. - Schopenhauer Posts: 5639 | From Aptos CA USA | Registered: Apr 2005
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merrygirl
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Member # 12041
posted
Great article!
Posts: 3905 | From USA | Registered: May 2007
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posted
Received the link yesterday through google news alert, and wrote to thank the columnist yesterday. He replied yesterday evening. (below) What a great guy! It was fun to read some of his other columns too-but this was, of course, the best.
His reply..short, but sweet.
Thanks, Ann. Best of luck with your struggle.
Best,
dh
-----Original Message----- From:[mailto Sent: Tue 8/28/2007 11:00 PM To: Hamill, Denis Cc: x x Subject: Many thanks for your comments on Lyme Disease
Great column. I am in California and have had lyme since I was bitten in my own backyard in 1991. My youngest son was in preschool, now he's at UCSanta Cruz and has never known his mom the way she was when she traveled the world, skiing the Japan Alps and banca boating in the surf in the Philippines.
The story is always the same. Six years until my doc admitted I had lyme. Another five years and many, many docs to get adequate treatment, another three years to see real improvement....but too late for a "cure"--even the courageous LLMDs can't work miracles when the other docs have messed up so badly.
I received the link to your column through my google news alert, and will forward it to my friends. Best of luck to Cara and her mother. Check out the comments section on ABC's Good Morning America site after this morning's lyme patient, Brooke Landau was on. One of these days all of us will finally be heard.
Also, please give my regards to Assemblywoman Mayersohn. Here in California, our physcicians are protected enough to be able to treat as they see necessary. However, that does not prevent attacks from the IDSA trying to discredit them for helping us, and there are still very few ILADS physicians for the increasingly alarming number of patients.
Thanks so much for your column.
Ann
Healdsburg, CA
Posts: 287 | From Northern California, USA | Registered: Oct 2000
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AliG
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
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posted
GREAT ARTICLE!!
Thanks for posting!
Ali
-------------------- Note: I'm NOT a medical professional. The information I share is from my own personal research and experience. Please do not construe anything I share as medical advice, which should only be obtained from a licensed medical practitioner. Posts: 4881 | From Middlesex County, NJ | Registered: Jul 2006
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klutzo
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Fabulous column. I actually think this got to the crux of the matter and covered it more thoroughly than any of the recent short TV or radio interviews.
Klutzo
Posts: 1269 | From Clearwater, Florida, USA | Registered: May 2004
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