Lyme Disease Awareness Month: Part 5

Lyme Disease Awareness Month: Part 4

Des Moines Lyme Family

Fighting Lyme disease as a family (Des Moines)

Lyme Disease Awareness Month: Part 3

Lyme Disease Awareness Month: Part 2

Lyme Disease Awareness Month: Part 1

Reading never gets old

Ham and not the meaty kind.

Ham - to act in an exaggerated style, usually to make people laugh.

Chocolate 'Stache

“Strength is the capacity to break a Hershey bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.”  Judith Viorst

Snowy Summer days

Wes and the children made it outside to build a snowman one weekend. Wes did most of the work, so that was a good workout. Olivia was outside for the whole process.

Here comes helper #2, finally! Watch out!

Marshall looks as if he's really "getting into it" here, but he had just fallen. It's hard work walking in snow with little legs.

The final product looks like a snow-dog.

 Just because we might be getting up to 50degs today, here's a picture to help us along.

When ALS & MS are Lyme

I found two articles today that piqued my curiosity. I will need to find some time, that I don't have-ha, to read through them carefully. My skimmed overview showed documents that were well-researched with multiple resources. I also appreciate the fact that the author explains why she researched the information and wrote these two articles. There is no hidden agenda.


The first book "When ALS is Lyme" 'Examines... the link between ALS and Neuroborreliosis.'

The author writes "I never pick an opinion based on what I'd like to be true. I base my opinions on a genuine curiosity into discovering the truth. I have Lyme disease myself. 

For lack of much help from the medical profession, in my quest to self-treat myself out of this mess, getting informed about this subject meant turning it into a special interest involving 15 years of self-study in medical literature, but also digging through countless anecdotal reports by patients, original research and my own experiences and treatment experiments with Lyme disease. Not to mention my communications with microbiologists. 

Now, when most people say they've "studied medical literature" they mean they read an abstract here and there. When I say I studied the medical literature, I mean that instead of doing all kinds of nice things in summer, I spent it mainly purchasing studies and going over them with a fine-tooth comb, then correlating them with other studies. 
Eventually, out comes a book or an article, such as with my free eBook on Lyme disease as a frequent cause of ALS and my "bestseller" (> 15000 Facebook likes, yay!) on Lyme as the cause of Multiple Sclerosis." 

The second book "Multiple sclerosis is Lyme disease: Anatomy of a cover-up" delves into the concealment 'since 1911 that Multiple Sclerosis is caused by a bacterium' and therefore can be cured.

The author says, "I intended to write a book on Lyme as a major cause of Alzheimer (Microbiologist Judith Miklossy found that the brains of Alzheimer patients contained in 25% of cases living Borellia bacteria, and in 75% of cases oral Treponema (also spirochetal bacteria)). But since I got lambasted beyond the pale when I started giving away my Lyme/ALS book, I decided to leave the connection between Spirochetes and Alzheimer as an exercise for the reader. I think I made my point very well - my article about Lyme as the cause of MS contains so much hard evidence that it is impossible to dismiss as "opinion" or "conspiracy theory"."

Source of author's quotes linked here

Doctor Treatment

Has your doctor treated you this way as shown in this humorous clip?

LymeDad's letter to daughter

This is a letter a father wrote to his daughter suffering from Lyme disease in 2007.

https://www.lymedisease.org/lymedad/

“Dear Family of a Lyme Disease patient,

I am writing this letter to all parents and family members who are witnessing their children, wife, son, father, aunt, uncle, cousin, etc. struggle with Lyme Disease.

I am one of you.

For more than 6 years my daughter has suffered through this ugly, dark disease.

She has experienced horrible migraines, severe joint & muscle pain, nausea, vomiting, extreme fatigue and loss of her ability to speak or think logically (these are just a few of her symptoms).

She has become unable to work. She has been forced to move back into our home at the age of 23 (she is now 29). She has virtually lost her 20′s, one of the most productive and exciting time of her life.

We have taken her to every known medical specialist in southern California as well as three different general practitioners.

She has been diagnosed, at differing times, as having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Chronic Pain Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Psychosis, and MS (please notice that all of these are either syndromes or descriptions of symptoms; none of them are diseases).

For the first 4 years of her struggle, I was not a good parent, even though I thought I was.

My daughter didn’t have any outward sign of her illness. She looked “normal”. After many, many blood tests, MRIs, CAT Scans, x-rays, psychological tests; everything came back “normal.”

I was, and still am, one of the world’s biggest cynics and skeptics (I’m originally from Missouri – so “Show-Me.”)

Surely if you are as sick as you say you are, there must be something that will show up in your blood tests or on x-rays.

You can’t possibly be this ill and not have something tangible to show for your symptoms.

You’re either just faking it or you’re lazy or it’s psychosomatic or you’re trying avoid the real world.

Get off your lazy butt and get some exercise or get a real job or face up to life like the rest of us.

That’s the way I approached her illness. It’s time you took control of your illness and will yourself well.

I was so far off-base. It took an outstanding Lyme Literate Medical Doctor to show me the error in my approach with my daughter and to show me the reality of this disease.

My daughter and I have both suffered because of my ignorance. (I’m not saying all of you are ignorant, I’m saying I was ignorant. To be ignorant simply means to be uninformed not stupid). I am still working to rebuild the closeness we had before Lyme.

Lyme Disease is real, the pain is real, the problem with logical thought is real, the lack of energy is real, etc., etc., etc.

If your child or family member has been diagnosed with Lyme Disease, they are just as sick, if not more, than someone who has a more “traditional” illness, like Lupus or Multiple Sclerosis or Cancer.

I’ve done all the study, I’ve been with my daughter at all of the appointments, I’ve watched the misery she’s been through.

Hey they just can’t help the way this disease treats them. It’s not their fault.

We as family members need to be there to support them. They don’t need our pity. They don’t need our skepticism. They don’t need our criticism.

They need our understanding.

If you as family members will take the time to study this disease, you’ll see that it is real. The little buggers who have invaided their bodies are real and they are making our loved ones sick.

Please spend the time you currently spend trying to figure out why your loved one acts the way they do really studying the disease. There are volumes being written on the internet as well as new books being published everyday on this disease.

We can’t possibly understand the way they feel, not unless we have the same bacteria in our bodies.

My daughter has a long way to go before she’s back to where she was 6 years ago. She has a lot of work and pain to endure before she can get there.

She certainly doesn’t need someone who claims to love her causing her any more pain than she has already.

Families, from one who has been in your shoes, please let them know you love them.

Let them know you’re there to help them.

Let them know that there’s no way you can possibly understand their pain, but that you will try to understand their illness.

I think one of the most important things I’ve come to learn is that my daughter’s disease may be God’s way to teach me a lesson.

I’m not saying God gave my daughter Lyme disease, but He may be using this disease to teach me how to love, how to be patient and how to be more understanding.

I wish you all good health and I hope that none of you will ever have to experience what our Lyme disease loved ones are experiencing.