NEWS / FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN KANSAN.COM
HEALTH
Awareness, early diagnosis key to beating Lyme disease
BY ALEESE KOPP
TAMPER Undobbs KANS
A container of preserved ticks known as the "parasite zoo" sits in a lab at Watkins Memorial Health Center. Of the variety of specimens preserved the deer tick, which is responsible for the spreading of lymme disease among humans.
Tanner Grubbs/KANSAN
akopf@kansan.com
It's late. Christy restlessly lies in bed waiting for the painful cries she knows will soon wake her. Abruptly, she hears her son shout for her. Sweat drips from his body. The fear and pain on his face is unmistakable.
LYME DISEASE
LYME DISEASE
* Relatively treatable and undamaging when caught in the first 30 days
* Symptoms include fatigue, chills, fever, headache, and muscle and joint aches, and swollen lymph nodes
SPOTTING THE SYMPTOMS:
Christy brings a heating pad for the cramps in his stomach and legs. She gives him Tylenol to ease the piercing in his head. She sits with her arms around him in the bed, a remedy the medicine can't provide.
CHRONIC LYME DISEASE
- Lyme disease that progresses past the 30 days or goes unnoticed
Lyme disease is a tick-borne illness caused by the spiral-shaped bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi. The bacteria can cause infection of multiple organs and produce a wide range of symptoms. These symptoms include a bull's eye-shaped rash, fatigue, chills, fever, headache, muscle and joint aches and swollen lymph nodes. When untreated, symptoms severely worsen and sometimes prove deadly in what is known as chronic Lyme disease.
is unsure of exactly how all her family members acquired it. She said her entire family participated in outdoor activities that exposed them to ticks.
- Significantly more destructive and sometimes deadly
Her son, Michael, is 9 years old and suffers from Lyme disease. The dark circles under his eyes are the only traces of the terrors his body endures each night. His mother, Christy Barnett of Lawrence, said she had taken him to the hospital numerous times.
There is much debate over how Lyme disease can be spread, if it is contagious and how it is transmitted. Therefore, Barnett
Since 2008, health departments have been reporting both confirmed cases and probable cases of Lyme disease. Cases in Kansas have doubled each year since 2006, with 16 confirmed cases in 2008.
- Symptoms include severe cognitive, neurological and arthritic symptoms sometimes mistaken for fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome
State health departments reported 28,921 confirmed cases and 6,277 probable cases of Lyme disease to the Center for Disease Control in 2008. This is a five percent increase in confirmed cases from 2007.
"Michael is very strong and courageous, but he can be afraid," Barnett said. "He is afraid of what is going to happen to him. He has told me, 'I am not going to get as bad as you'."
Michael has seen the medicine bottles, syringes, and IV equipment in his mother's bedroom and knows the torment she endures. He now sees his father, who he has had to increasingly depend on in his mother's absence, endure the same pain. Michael, his mom, his dad and perhaps his sister Trinity, who is currently being evaluated, all suffer from Lyme disease.
However, she said the neurological signs and other health problems her daughter experienced from birth make her wish she had been tested sooner.
Barnett didn't recognize the disease until 2007. Since then, her symptoms accelerated quickly. First, she was too ill to work.
Her blood pressure dropped, the left side of her body went numb and she would faint after being on her feet for more than a few hours. She felt drunk, dizzy and nauseous.
Her head, fingers and toes were in horrible pain. Next, the symptoms progressed to where she couldn't remember where she was.
"I would get lost in the community or at home," Barnett said. "I would lose my speech and ability to think or process new information. Symptoms would come and go and never be the same every day."
Barnett was suffering from
People such as Barnett and Blumhagen know the emotional, financial, psychological and social drains the disease causes.
There were times when Peggy Blumhagen, a single mother of four children who lives in Lawrence, was unable to speak, walk or get out of bed. She described the process as slowly losing her ability to process information, read or calculate.
"It's like being treated for AIDS," Blumhagen said. "We have IV therapy, oral pills." I've had up to 17 shots a week. It's a very serious disease if it's allowed to continue past the early stages."
For those reasons, but most of all as a means of advocacy and support for people currently with the disease. Blumhagen helped form the Kansas Lyme Fighters. Inc. Through their own experiences, the volunteer group helps people who are too weak with the disease to help themselves.
Patients with later stages of Lyme disease, past the 30 days, start to have arthritic-type complaints and symptoms of the nervous system that could be considered chronic Lyme disease, Quinlan said.
Barnett never dreamed her once active and involved family would all be victims of Lyme disease. She said her family is now far from normal, but that she is determined to spread awareness.
recognition that can circumvent the problems of chronic Lyme disease.
Patty Quinlan, supervisor of nursing for student health services, said Watkins only diagnoses a few cases of Lyme disease a year. But it's common for somebody to come in with a tick bite.
chronic Lyme disease. People like the Barnett family who suffer from chronic Lyme disease, have difficulty locating doctors who recognize and treat the disease. Doctors who are "Lyme literate" are usually expensive and out of state. Barnett said. Misdiagnosis or late diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease is a problem as well.
Before administering a Lyme disease test, Quinlan said the patient must meet specific requirements, including a bull's-eye looking rash that came from an outdoor tick. In the past year, Watkins has conducted three Lyme disease tests. Quinlan said one problem with diagnoses was that the rash wasn't always present.
"Our family has been lucky to have a very good friend and advocate helping us find care," Barnett said. "Not all families have this opportunity, so I want to help as many people as I can."
They know the importance of prevention, education and early
diagnose because a rash is never the same on two people”
"Any illness that a rash helps with the diagnostics is difficult to
Edited by Kelly Gibson
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