The Lyme Long Con Continues

I am sure everybody hits points in their lives when they sit back for a moment and reflect on where they are, what their plans are for the future, how will they get things accomplished, etc. I know I used to do this periodically. Reflection has always been a part of my life. Pre-Lyme disease, I was always positive that the future would always be filled with unending growth and opportunities, both personal and otherwise.

Now? I’m in the midst of trying to treat a real illness, one that has been in my body silently and insidiously taking over. Lyme bacteria – a corkscrew-shaped bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi – has played the Lyme Long Con with me and hundreds, I mean THOUSANDS, of others. For years and years it has slowly but surely, patiently, illness after illness, entered almost every single system in my body.

But the CDC and IDSA  (Infectious Diseases Society of America) panel are also complicit in this LONG CON, the Lyme Lie, the Lyme denial, against all of us. For years, the CDC has claimed that Lyme disease is difficult to contract and easy to treat. Yet, in the past 40+ years, science has confirmed that there are 300+ strains of Borrelia bacteria  with Lyme being merely only one of these 100s of strains that are all transmitted by ticks, fleas, and mosquitos worldwide.

This is so ludicris at this point that I honestly don’t understand how the CDC can still be promoting this misinformation. Just a few years ago, the CDC changed its number of newly contracted Lyme infections from 30,000 to 300,000 yearly. Yes, from 30,000 to 300,000!! A YEAR. And many believe that this number is much lower than actual cases each year. 300,000 PER YEAR. Let that sink in. Just to give us some perspective, there are about 50,000 new HIV cases and 200,000 breast cancer cases each year in the US. Yet, almost no money is going into researching Borrelia complex diseases.

I want to scream that BORRELIA INFECTIONs are real. LYME IS REAL. CHRONIC LYME IS REAL. CHRONIC LYME IS HAPPENING TO thousands of PEOPLE, not only in this country but globally as well!  As patients, we need to have access to treatment, individualized treatment, treatment that lasts more than a mere 2-4 weeks of antibiotics. You may say, but what the heck does this have to do with your first paragraph. Well, everything, my friends.

Lyme has stopped me, as well as thousands of others, in my path. It has stalled me for awhile, off and on for years, and I unknowingly placed faith in the CDC, the  American healthcare system, in my doctors, faith in health insurance companies. I placed my FAITH in these entities sure that they would find out why I was dealing with strange health issues off and on over the span of 3-4 years. They didn’t. 

Then, I put faith into the fact that once diagnosed, I would be treated, and I would have a recovery plan. Alas, getting a Lyme diagnosis almost means nothing. The USA has done absolutely nothing to improve research, diagnosis, nor treatment since the disease was discovered (it’s been around for thousands of years) in 1975. Yes, take that in. 1975. We know almost nothing more now than we did then. In the meantime, THOUSANDS of people have gone undiagnosed and untreated. Thousands have been misdiagnosed with MS, Lupus, and ALS, along with other diseases and gone untreated for Borrleia infections. Why??? The treatment for Lyme and other Borrelia infections has not and cannot be easily monetized – YET. So we wait. And 300,000+ and more become infected every single year.

So here I am. Halted. Stopped for much longer than anticipated. Perhaps, stopped here permanently. I know, I know. I need to be positive. I need to buck up. I need to stop focusing on my illness. Most days, I can manage this. But this past month, not so much. Sometimes, we just need to GRIEVE a loss.Sometimes, we need to be ANGRY. Sometimes, we just need to BE.

If you would like more information about Borrelia infections (this includes Lyme bacteria infections) then please watch Under Our Skin. It provides some basic information regarding Lyme disease as well as information about how the CDC and the IDSA are working in tendem, not only to discredit Lyme doctors and patients daily, but on a much larger scale, how these two organizations are undermining the most dangerous health crisis of our time.

Please be careful. LYME IS EVERYWHERE – WORLDWIDE. Take care, my friends – B