The CDC says if you’re treated in the early stages of Lyme disease, you’ll likely recover rapidly and completely, and even when the infection is caught in later stages, it usually responds to antibiotics. But a local woman says she’s among a large number of people suffering from chronic Lyme disease.
“Currently, Lyme disease feels to me, like an enemy, really it’s something inside my body that exists and at this point always will,” Brenda Frederick says.
The 41-year-old Blair County woman says she was diagnosed with Lyme disease 2 years ago, but believes her problem started 35 years ago, when she was diagnosed with Rocky Mountain spotted fever, an illness caused by a different type of tick than the one that causes Lyme disease.
Brenda says, “there were many times throughout my childhood, I had mystery ailments, I remember missing weeks of school over the course of two, three years because I couldn’t use my right leg.”
Brenda says now she carries the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria associated with Lyme disease.
“I’ve lost feeling in these 3 fingers, we don’t know if I’ll get it back,” she says. “My toes, there’s parts there some of my toes that I can’t feel anymore.”
Brenda says she’s on a rotating schedule of different antibiotics, depending on medical tests by her doctor whose practice in Washington D.C. focuses on Lyme disease. She declined to name him, saying he could get in trouble because of these prescribing habits.
A local infectious disease specialist says the idea that Lyme disease can be a chronic illness, requiring ongoing treatment, is very controversial.
“There is a group of doctors that feels that Lyme can be chronic or that it will recur and has to be treated for a long period of time, Most doctors think that short treatments would be the way to treat rather than long term,” Dr. Robert Sullivan explains.
“Some doctors will treat more than one time, but then stop giving antibiotics, which is another issue. Long term antibiotics have a lot of side-effects and personally I try not to do that, if I can avoid it,” he adds.
Dr. Sullivan says a small number of patients have recurrent symptoms, but that may be a reaction to the original illness, not a sign of continuing infection. The CDC says what is sometimes referred to as chronic Lyme disease is a condition is properly known as “Post-treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome” (PTLDS). The agency does not recommend long term antibiotic treatment.
Dr Sullivan and Brenda do agree that Lyme disease is epidemic in Pennsylvania. He diagnoses and treats some cases every week and she’s started a support group to help patients and to raise awareness.
Her Central Allegheny Lyme Support Group’s next meeting is scheduled for August 10th at 6:30pm in Curryville Pa. at the Schoolhouse.
For the standard medical viewpoint on Lyme disease, you can go to www.cdc.gov.
