Sometimes when I am being a particularly impatient mom with too much to do and too little time, I tell the kids that I need to see some action pronto, or my head is going to pop off my shoulders and spin around uncontrollably! This usually gets a giggle and hopefully some obedience, but seriously, most parents understand the moment when the lid is about to blow.
More than my rowdy and unwilling children, blatant disregard for acknowledgement of what is really happening in Chronic Lyme is one thing that can make my head spin. Then to take it even farther, a recently read a doofus’s writing that actually blames doctors healing Lyme disease. Pah-lease. (pause for affect because my head is actually spinning right now).
I often troll the internet and facebook to keep abreast of what is going on and to share therapies and treatments with people struggling with Lyme to give them tools and hope. I tripped across this article today and am still writhing and sweating and mumbling to myself about it.
Here is the first quote the author of the article cited from a Dr. Hymes that set me off……
“The problem is,” Dr. Hymes continued, “we now know much more about the disease and how to diagnose and treat it, and the activists around it haven’t caught up with that.” Link to article on Daily Beast written by Russell Saunders
I don’t know where to even start with this except that after breathing fire out of my nose for 10 minutes, I can now calmly type this article without burning the hairs on the back of my hands.
Nothing infuriates me more than insiduous, uneducated, healthy, populous, grandstanding reporters and doctors speaking of something they know nothing about and misinforming or scaring sick people.
Let me set the record straight.
1. Lyme doctors by and large are not taking advantage of us – they are saving lives.
Its the beauty of capitalism and the yearn of the human condition to be well and functioning. We will fight for life or find someone who will fight for it for us. Lyme doctors were born out of a void of necessity for really sick people. These are the kind of doctors we want to breed in this country. Doctors who won’t take “no” for an answer and who will try and keep trying to solve a complex problem.
Are there creeps in the world that would do anything in the name of the almighty dollar – sure. I’ve met lots of them and none of them are the fringe doctors we are talking about. They had traditional medicine written all over them with the capital letters M.D. and L.A.Z.Y.
2. Lyme doctors are educated by experience and trial and error.
I went to 12 doctors before finding out I had Lyme, how is it then that “we know more about the disease”, when no one could figure out what I had. I have met hundreds of chronic Lyme patients from all over the country and outside of it. If we are now more educated to treat Lyme, how come none of their dozens of doctors know what they had or how to fix them either?
Just because there are doctors healing Lyme without an MD after their name, but with other initials like DO, DC, DHM, etc, doesn’t mean they don’t know what they are doing. I know eye doctors, dentists, and ObGyn’s that know more about Lyme than you do Dr. Hymes. And guess what, those specialists are referring their patients to get tested for Lyme or find a Lyme doctor. Really…..its happening, why is traditional medicine behind the times?
3. Activists exist because there is a conspiracy to cover it up.
I can’t imagine what the first couple hundred HIV positive patients that contracted AIDS felt like, but it has to be something like this Lyme debacle. How is it that socially and medically we jumped on board to acknowledge and treat HIV so quickly though? Its a virus that is easy to detect and easy to keep from spreading by educating about sexual transmission. It was the treatment protocol of AIDS that took so long and is still not entirely successful. Acquiring an unpopular chronic and deadly illness in the dawn of its time just flat out SUCKS. Why is Lyme still in its dawn if it was discovered in the 80’s?
It is not the same as HIV. Lyme is difficult to diagnose, it is difficult to blood test and it is a beast to kill and you can’t do it with modern medicine, so nobody wants to touch it. Modern medicine doesn’t know how it spreads and how it is contracted if there is no evidence of a tick bite. If there was a “chemo” type of treatment for Lyme, don’t you think medicine would be all over it – follow the money people. Right now, if antibiotics fail at treating someone’s chronic lyme, there are no other options for modern medicine, so they can’t make any money off you at all.
4. Doctors who solve problems also care.
The 11 doctors who couldn’t help me, never called or followed up. Not a single one lost sleep, did further research or wondered why a perfectly healthy 40 year woman suddenly drops to below 85 lbs and has dozens of random symptoms. My lyme doctors care and will not stop until healing occurs. They email, they have called and they do research all the time to further treatment for their patients.
5. I pay out of pocket by choice, not because I am a sucker.
Insurance isn’t covering treatments that are working. its not our fault we are paying out of pocket, its yours.
Specialist MD visit costs around $279 in the Midwest which gets you around 3 minutes – but insurance covers it. Compare that to a $200, 30 minute lyme doctor appointment in which I can see the doctor and ask questions and walk out feeling better. Just because I pay cash doesn’t mean its a lesser service, or I am being suckered.
Let’s compare lyme treatment over the course of one year to the cost of being permannetly on a myriad of pharmas for life? What’s the cost difference then?
I am not naive. I didn’t run into the arms of a “predatory” Lyme doctor because I was so sick that I got struck with a case of the stupids. I ran full force into the arms of Lyme doctor who listened and healed me when no one else listened and could help. I didn’t need anti-depressants or anti-nauseau medicine – I needed to heal.
Its because the system is broken. My insurance paid $3900 for a CT scan this year that my son didn’t really need. That same amount of money would get me 10 hours one on one with my Lyme doctor or an entire week of treatment including therapies for healing. How can you compare the 10 min CT scan price with a full week of Lyme treatment?
6. With Lyme, you have to feel it or see it to believe it.
I have always said I wouldn’t wish Chronic lyme on my worst enemy, but until some of these loud mouth uneducated people/doctors stop wagging their tail and actually get sick from it or one of their loved ones does, then nothing will change. Until you have suffered it or watched your children suffer it then you have no idea. You need to seriously STEP OFF.
We’ve all heard the jokes men like to tell about women and PMS and we don’t think they are very funny. How can you laugh at something you have never felt yourself. Men have no perspective on PMS or childbirth or breastfeeding. Its best not to step in it on those subjects if you are a man.
So how come, Lyme is the one disease on the planet that doctors can criticize the sick people for being “hysterical” or naive and the doctors for being “uneducated” and “predators”. When is the last time the media or a doctor came out and insulted a woman with breast cancer? Or a doctor accused a woman with breast cancer of needing anti-depressants because she made herself sick?
7. Autoimmune disorders don’t just appear out of nowhere – they have an underlying cause
News flash, lyme doctors don’t diagnose lupus or other autoimmune disorders because they are ALL caused by Lyme or a co-infection. Duh. Doctor, do you understand the term autoimmune disorder at all? And what have you done brilliant doctor in treating your patient’s lupus that the Lyme doctor “missed”? You have put her on a pharaceutical that is masking symptoms and creating new ones. You are not curing anyone and fooling even less. (okay I’ll put the soapbox down soon).
Autoimmune disorders have become the new fad in diagnosis in our generation. But when is the last time someone asked what they are and where they come from? The body doesn’t just start attacking itself for no reason. The same reason that cancer doesn’t come out of nowhere. The toxicity or pathogen started somewhere. Do the research and think think think for yourself.
8. Competition is here to stay.
Lyme doctors are curing people and getting the well and traditional medicine can’t stand it. Lyme doctors are being persecuted by others and medical boards for the very same thing. If we aren’t a society that puts people on pharmaceuticals for life to keep them sick then no one would make any money. Its all about the money.
Why aren’t there expose articles being written about the predatory traditional doctors like Dr. Hymes, who are blatantly trying to keep people sick and not listen to them. How dare you judge what you haven’t studied or researched. I bet I’ve spent more time reading Lyme books, experiencing the disease firsthand (myself and both my kids), and talking to people about Lyme in one month than Dr. Hymes has his whole career.
9. The days of a “one sized treatment for all” are over.
My Lyme doctor/s customized the treatment protocol for healing based on the individual. I would love to meet all of Dr. Hymes patients who he claims are completely free of Lyme after antibiotics. Impossible. Just like other forms of chronic illness, one size treatment will not work for everyone. Even in traditional treatments like RA – there are multiple drugs that are prescribed to help patients deal with pain. Why? Because they work differently for each person. One treatment answers are a thing of the past. My 85 year old friend just got a specialize hearing aid – one of the dozens on the market because it was best for her ears and her hearing. Why then are we trying to apply one treatment option to Lyme, when we don’t for other chronic illnesses or medical problems.
Choices are a part of medicine based on need, cost and effectiveness. Choices are an important tool in the hand of the patient that we can use every minute of our health journey with every kind of doctor, that will not be taken away.
10. Note to self: There are MDs out there treating Lyme successfully who are brilliant.
The final note is that there are a shockingly large (and growing) number of well known, brilliant and outstanding MDs out there doing the research and making a difference. I applaud you. I congratulate you and I thank you. Keep talking louder and writing books and doing research and telling us all what you have learned. Eventually the Dr. Hymes’s voices of the world will be deafened by the truth. Dr. Klinghardt, Dr. Horowitz, Dr. Burgdorfer, Dr. Cowden, Dr. Wright and many more – keep talking, keep healing, keep up the good work.
Lastly, to Russell Saunders who wrote the article, whatever happened to balanced and fair journalism. You wrote an entire article about Lyme, but didn’t consult with any actual Lyme doctors that you were insulting. Really, this is called smearing and misleading at its worst.
So as I step off my soapbox and put my spinning head back on my shoulders, I find amusement in the fact that as I typed Dr. Hymes name multiple times in this article, I commonly kept misspelling it Dr. Lymes……not a coincidence I’m sure.
Blessings and healing,
Janice Fairbairn
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