Be Informed! Ignorant No More!

Depending on how old you are, you may or may not remember the early days of the AIDS epidemic. People were becoming ill with a disease no one knew anything about. Then they started to die in drastic numbers and it was labeled a "syndrome". As research continued the controversy that surrounding this "new syndrome" was explosive but also highly ignored by most in the medical profession because in the beginning it was hitting mostly homosexual men, or so they thought. Over time this new "syndrome" or as some called it the "gay cancer" started cropping up in heterosexual individuals, babies, and finally our blood supply.

It wasn't until the amount of deaths got to a devastating level that research really forged ahead, the red tape of bureaucratic bullshit was finally cut and we had a name for this devastation and a possible treatment but this took YEARS of fighting and protests mostly, by the gay community and even if you do not agree with homosexuality we all owe those who faught this battle in the beginning a debt of gratitude regardless of lifestyle.

Today, the fight for proper Lyme Disease diagnosis, treatment, and validation is the same as it was in the early days of AIDS with only one difference. While people with long standing Lyme disease have, do and will continue to die, we don't die at a fast enough rate for most in the medical community to care much.
Lyme Disease has become a global epidemic that is being ignored by anyone and all who do not suffer it's catastrophic effects. Today in the United States alone there are hundreds of thousands of those who suffer and die each day due to the ignorance and egotistical attitudes of those who have moniker, M.D. after their names.
Your next question might be, Why? Thats a very good question and the answer simply put would be, Money. As we all know the practice of medicine in these times we live in is nothing more than a business. The days of a physician genuinly caring about the well being of their patient are long gone. The days of Insurance companies making decisions about YOUR health care are IN. Lyme Disease treatment can get expensive and depending on the case, can go on for years. Insurance companies do not want to pay bills like that regardless of the fact that you are paying your insurance premiums each month. Inturn, they refuse to pay the doctors. Well back to the business of doctoring. The physician has no desire to treat a patient when he knows that the patients insurance company is going to refuse to pay because then he or she won't be able to make their next boat payment.

So because of all this it's much much easier for the Physicans to deny Chronic Lyme Disease exsists. It's much much easier to stand by the lie that Lyme Disease can be treated and "cured" *coughbullshit* with only a few weeks worth of treatment with a low grade antibiotic. After all, doing it this way, everyone makes money.

In the meantime the chronic Lyme Disease patient suffers each day with a maze of symptoms coming from almost every part of the human body. Then when we do go to a doctor because we can no longer handle the suffering we are then doubly insulted by being giving either what I like to call a catch all diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia. I believe these last two so called illnesses are just one more way the medical community shows it's ignorance. Chronic Faitgue and Fibromyalgia, both of which the main symptoms are fatigue and pain are NOT diseases or syndromes in an of themselves. Have you ever heard that exhaustion and pain are diseases? I'd like to know when this happened? No, sorry. These are NOT diseases. These are SYMPTOMS of a disease or illness. This is our bodies way of telling us something is WRONG. But, once again, symptoms of unknown origin mean no difinitive diagnosis which means no difinitive treatment which means NO PROFIT.

If you aren't lucky enough to get a diagnosis of one of the two "symptoms" above (sad) you are then told that they can not find anything medically wrong and well, "it must be in your head". You are then shouffled off to a psychiatrist.
After years of people with chronic lyme disease fighting this label the new label is as I have heard it been called by many mainstream doctors " Mass hysteria". I have seen doctors say about the thousands of us that we all must have some kind of mental illness. Amazing isn't it?

So you see in the eyes of the medical profession ANY diagnosis even if it makes absolutely no sense is better than one of Chronic Lyme Disease because of the no profit factor despite all the reasearch that has been done. It's there, in black and white. It's been proven time and time again by Lyme Disease knowledgeable researchers and those few doctors who DO see Chronic Lyme Patients. Did you know there are less than 100 physicians in this entire country who will treat a Chronic Lyme Disease patient? And of those, many are being persecuted by medical boards for over prescribing antibiotics. Witch hunts that all start with the all mighty insurance companies. The M.D's who refuse to acknowledge Chronic Lyme Disease even exsists, (you know, the ones who need to pay off that boat) always fall back on the sorry excuse that "long term antibiotics are dangerous and cause serious medical problems" Yet, these SAME doctors will then turn around and prescribe YEARS of antibiotics to children with acne problem!! Makes sense huh? I'd like to know on what planet.

The time has come for ALL Lyme Disease patients, their loved ones, those who may know someone and the DOCTORS of this country to stand up and be heard. The medical doctors of this country have to STOP being afraid of the insurance companies and take BACK their own profession which is treating patients who are SICK. Ofcourse, this would be a phenominal thing but at the same time you have these same insurance companies lining the pockets of these doctors so that they will come out againts Chronic Lyme Disease and because the medical profession has become SO corrupt over the years many of these doctors have ethics lower than an ant and will accept these "kick backs" for their silence. Kind of sounds like the days of the mafia doesn't it?

So having said all this, I can not urge you ENOUGH to look through this blog, research, learn all that you can because one day and that day is coming VERY soon, like AIDS and Cancer, there will not be atleast one person who doesn't know someone who is suffering from Lyme Disease and its affects. Please get involved in this fight for life. We are becoming a society where the human life doesn't carry much weight. How devestatingly sad this is. If you are sick and you think you have Lyme Disease even if you think its something else and you are being dismissed by your physician and insurance company do NOT stand by and let it happen. Fight for your rights and don't give up until you win. Not only will you help yourself, you will be helping ALL of us.