Squeeze Out Lyme Disease!

On May 26th, my life changed in the blink of an eye.

When I walked into the office of yet another specialist, I HOPED, at this point, for a diagnosis of Lyme disease; anything to end my search for a diagnosis. I knew little - like most of the public - of the severity of the disease and the dangerous and life-altering implications that it truly carries.

At 17 years old, I did not expect to be diagnosed with a chronic illness, let alone one that is so vastly under-researched, underfunded, and underdeveloped -- all because of failed preliminary testing. The past 10 months, I've done and gone through things I never imagined I myself would go through - medications on medications, missing most of my senior year, receiving weekly injections, getting a catheter, learning how to self-administer IV treatments, spending almost 5 hours a day administering these treatments, bearing the gruesome side effects of these treatments...

At this doctor's appointment, nearly 3 years after I initially became ill, I was officially diagnosed with chronic neurological Lyme disease and Babesiosis, Ehrliciosis, & Bartonellosis (co-infections).

Chronic Lyme is a deeply complex, multi-system, neurological, AIDS-like infectious illness that evades and destroys the immune system, and infects every organ, muscle, tissue and cell of the body, including the brain, heart, and nervous system. In addition to having just one serious infection, however, most patients have multiple. The ticks that carry Borrelia Burgorferi bacteria (Lyme) are also hosts to a number of co-infections that can (and usually are) injected simultaneously into the body of the infected. These infections together disarm your immune system and severely complicate treatment.

Because my Lyme was not caught in its early stages (due to undeveloped testing and not enough advocacy), it advanced to a stage that has affected my life in intangible ways. I fight now not for myself but for anyone and everyone else who is currently struggling from misdiagnosis or lack of treatment. Lyme currently receives just 1% of national funding, despite the fact that Lyme cases are six times higher than HIV/AIDS and twice as common as breast cancer (both invasive and noninvasive combined). It is completely neglected by the CDC, who refuses to engage in research to advance testing for and treatment of Lyme. It is the fastest growing infectious disease in the United States and is now classified as a pandemic, with more cases that both HIV and breast cancer combined.

We are long overdue for a fundamental shift in the way we approach, test, diagnose, and view the complex systemic phenomenon that is Lyme disease.

Lyme kills. Please, PLEASE purchase and/or donate to fund research into testing and treatment of Lyme disease. Your contribution - however small or large - will make a WORLD of difference in the lives of SO many.

Help me work towards a day when Lyme testing is accurate and no one has to bear the effects of an illness that has the power to become so dangerous when it turns late-stage and chronic.