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.
For over 10 years, Carol E. was too fatigued to ride a bicycle at all. Now, after Lyme treatment, she’s cycling—and walking—to increase public awareness, as well as raise money for Lyme disease research.
I leave it to my blogging colleague, the Lyme Policy Wonk, to explain the disturbing details surrounding the Institute of Medicine's upcoming Lyme workshop. But I offer a few observations, because the issue directly affects something I’m heavily involved in—the 2010 CALDA Lymewalks.
Ashlyn Levin turns 20 this week, hospitalized since suffering cardiac arrest in July. It’s the latest chapter in a harrowing Lyme journey that started more than four years ago. A group of her friends who have been helping in the background all along are now mounting a public show of support for Ashlyn. They have already raised more than $2000 in her name for Lyme disease research via a CALDA fundraising page. And have recruited more than 30 people to walk in her honor at the Los Angeles CALDA Lymewalk in Santa Monica October 3.
Phyllis Mervine, president and founder of the California Lyme Disease Association, recently felt a tickle on her neck…and found a nymphal tick. Knowing that nymphs are often compared to poppy seeds, she collected some poppy seeds from her garden and put them on the same card with the tick. The picture which accompanies this blog is a photo of the tick and the poppy seeds. Here's her account of the episode.
Scheduled for brain surgery in November, Lyme patient Colby Lenz raises money for Lyme disease research.
After almost dying from Lyme disease, Pamela O'Kane will run, swim and bike in world class competition in Budapest, Hungary.
When we started publicizing that the 2010 CALDA Lymewalks are raising money for research, many people asked us what kind of research we are funding. It’s a fair question. Here’s a run-down on current research projects funded by CALDA.
Fiber artist/Lyme advocate Nani Lauriano Luculescu takes a CALDA T-shirt and turns it into a stunning piece of wearable art.
On July 8th, police in Ocala, Florida, made a shocking discovery in a travel trailer at the side of a highway–the bodies of 48-year-old George Strobos and his 49-year-old wife Jonalyn. It turns out the couple, both suffering from advanced Lyme disease, had taken their own lives. Last night, their son, Michael Strobo, of Austin, Texas, made a series of heartfelt postings about his parents on the CALDA Facebook page. Michael subsequently gave me permission to re-post his writings here.
When the eight-year-old boy bent his head down, his mother noticed an odd little bump under his hair. Looking more closely, she saw it was a tick. “We live near wetlands,” she explained to me. “We pull ticks off our dog all the time. No big deal.” She plucked out the tick with tweezers, threw it away and forgot about it.
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