Touched By Lyme
By Dorothy Kupcha Leland
This blog has several goals. First, to explore the personal side of Lyme disease and how it affects individuals and families. Second, to highlight useful information for people seeking answers about this complicated illness. Third, to help foster a sense of unity and shared purpose among the many diverse members of the Lyme community. Dorothy, who serves as President of LymeDisease.org, has a family member with Lyme disease. She is co-author of a book called When Your Child Has Lyme Disease: A Parent’s Survival Guide.
TOUCHED BY LYME: A hunger strike for “le droit de guerir”—the right to be cured
Matthis Lacoste is a 33-year-old Frenchman whose chronic Lyme disease has made it impossible for him to work. Recently, his disability payments were stopped and…
TOUCHED BY LYME: High school class nets $2200 for Lyme research
Fifteen-year-old Emyli Palmer has been raising steers since she was in grammar school, while participating in 4-H, Future Farmers of America and other agriculture-related activities….
TOUCHED BY LYME: “Why so long to diagnose?” Why, indeed?
SELF magazine recently wrote about “Real Housewife” Yolanda Hadid (formerly Foster) and her upcoming book Believe Me: My Battle with the Invisible Disability of Lyme…
TOUCHED BY LYME: A mom appreciates Ally Hilfiger for “getting it”
Yesterday, I posted my review of Ally Hilfiger’s book Bite me: How Lyme disease stole my childhood, made me crazy, and almost killed me. Today, Lisa Kilion,…
TOUCHED BY LYME: Ally Hilfiger’s stolen childhood
When Ally Hilfiger is about seven years old, she is bitten by a tick. However, nobody connects that fact to the series of changes that…
TOUCHED BY LYME: Docu-drama rings alarm about Lyme epidemic
In the summer of 2013, 17-year-old Joseph Elone from Poughkeepsie, NY, returned from two weeks at a summer camp feeling lousy, with a cough, a…
TOUCHED BY LYME: Leprosy drug shows promise for Lyme treatment
I was privileged to attend the Lyme disease conference at Binghamton University in New York State on Saturday May 7. All the speakers were excellent…
TOUCHED BY LYME: Spreading the word about Lyme disease in Maine
Wiscasset, Maine was quite the place to be yesterday. More than 325 people turned out at the Second Annual Midcoast Lyme Disease Support and Education Conference…
TOUCHED BY LYME: First-place award for our Lyme book
I was pleased and proud to accept a “First Place–Adult Non-fiction” award from the Northern California Publishers and Authors association at a banquet near Sacramento…
TOUCHED BY LYME: “Even good girls can get deathly ill”
At age 25, Amie Valpone, an up-until-then-healthy and successful marketing professional, was in a bad way—and nobody knew why. “My legs were swollen, my…
TOUCHED BY LYME: Media drinks kool-aid on Lyme study
In an article published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, European scientists reported on their study of whether giving oral antibiotics after…
TOUCHED BY LYME: Jesse Colin Young says life with Lyme “cuts like a knife”
In 1995, fire erupted at California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, a place of wild beauty about 30 miles north of San Francisco. Fed by hot,…