CANOEIST AND CLIMBER WITH LYME DISEASE

Tick 'em off your list
http://www.thesouthernreporter.co.uk/outdoors/Tick-39em-off-your-list.6457265.jp

Canoeist and climber Allan Mitchell spent three years suffering a range of debilitating and increasingly serious symptoms before Lyme disease was diagnosed.
Published Date: 05 August 2010
By Sally Gillespie

A KEEN canoeist and holder of a mountain climbing record is on a mission to warn other outdoors enthusiasts about Lyme disease.
The debilitating tick-borne illness blighted his life for almost three years as medics struggled to diagnose the changing symptoms.Former KOSB army instructor from Lilliesleaf, Allan Mitchell, said: "I had always been as fit as a flea. I'm the kind of person who shrugs things off. I thought it would go away, but it never did, it came back."The father-of-five has had to fight for his life with viral meningitis, a symptom of Lyme disease."I thought it was just a headache. I was rushed to hospital and given a lumbar puncture. I was very, very unwell for a few days," he told TheSouthern.He was later rushed to hospital with oxygen levels in his blood lower than people with the lung disease COPD."I was quite seriously ill. When the oxygen in your blood drops, your blood goes acidic, which causes a lot of pain in your muscles."But most worrying was not knowing what was wrong with him, said the 45-year-old."My wife thought I was going to die. I had periods of generally being all right. It can affect you mentally. You can see how some people are driven off the edge." This from the man who climbed Ben Nevis 20 times (nearly 21 - he was just yards from the top when bad weather forced him back) in a week in 2005 to gain the Guinness world record for the most feet ascended and descended on a mountain in one week.He remembers the tick bite which gave him Lyme disease nearly three years ago."It quickly became red and swollen with a strange rash."The symptoms - sleeplessness, fever, hot joints, muscle spasms - kept recurring, but each time doctors said it was a virus and likely to go. Tests showed the spasms, cramps, muscle twitching, tinitis and other symptoms were not from a neurological disease.Next he got meningitis and recovered. A second neurological opinion said the "benign muscle twitching" would go in time. A week later, he couldn't breathe during the night and was rushed to hospital. It was then that the low blood oxygen levels were identified. But doctors remained puzzled as to the cause of the problem. "At this stage I really thought I was going off my head and was in total despair, wondering what was wrong with me," he said.It was then that he saw Dr Jeff Cullen at Selkirk hospital, who suggested testing for Lyme disease.Even post-diagnosis, it has been a fight. Although the antibiotics worked initially, he has had two relapses.

BBC NEWS LYME DISEASE WARNING

BBC NEWS York & North Yorkshire

Lyme disease threat to walkers on North York Moors

Walkers on the North York Moors are being warned to check their skin carefully after being out on the moors.
Ticks, from deer and sheep, infected with Lyme disease are said to pose a serious risk to health as Peter Lugg found out.

To watch the clip click here

Ticks can be found throughout the UK so it is important to be vigilant. It is easy to miss the sometimes poppy seed sized tick and not everyone gets the bulls eye rash. Not all ticks carry Lyme Disease, Borrelia, but ticks which feed off any small mammal such as rats, mice or birds etc., can carry a multitude of infections most of which are never even tested for. We can't exactly ask the tick if it picked up an infection in it's last feed and if so which infection. By the time we are really sick it is often too late to treat as an early stage infection and if that opportunity is missed then longer courses of treatment are sometimes needed to clear the infection according to the ILADS Guidelines.

It is good to see an increasing awareness in the media but so much more needs to be done. If only I had known 7 years ago that we could catch Lyme Disease in the UK, I had thought it unique to USA. If only the doctors I saw with bites, rashes , summer flu' like no other I had ever experienced, migrating arthralgias, not to mention the doctor I asked if it could be from an insect bite, who firmly said no with the shake of her head, if only they had known.

To think that all that arthritis pain and disability, muscle weakness, dysphargia, fatigue, peripheral neuropathies could have been avoided with more doctor and patient awareness. 6 1/2 years of chronic illness could have been avoided with just a few weeks antibiotics.

Shocking isn't it but what is more shocking is the children who suffer undiagnosed and untreated and they are the most vulnerable.

Thankfully there are a growing number of doctors here in the UK who are realising there is more to this controversy over Lyme treatment than they have been led to believe. Where I live in Guildford there are an increasing number of patients I am getting to know with Chronic Lyme Disease but also an increasing number of patients who are seeking and receiving early medical attention.

For more information look at UK charity website Lyme Disease Action

LYME DISEASE AWARENESS IN WALES

Well done BBC Wales for showing this program, thank you to Kathy and Louisa Morgan for raising awareness. Thank you Wendy Fox for her tireless efforts to raise awareness of this horrible illness. Wendy Fox is one of the founder members of BADA UK Charity, Borreliosis and Associated Diseases Awareness UK.

Also in the news recently

Wales On line article here below are two short extracts

WALKERS are being warned to take a series of simple precautions in a bid to prevent them contracting Lyme disease.
The incidence of Lyme disease, which is spread by infected ticks, has been steadily rising, but awareness remains low among the general public and employers.

It can cause a range of symptoms, the most common being a rash called erythema migrans, which has a distinctive bullseye pattern.
The rash can cover a large area and last for weeks if untreated. Some patients may also have flu-like symptoms.
The most common complications of untreated Lyme borreliosis affect the nervous system, usually within a few weeks to months of infection. They include facial palsy, viral-like meningitis and radiculitis, which is a nerve inflammation that can lead to pain, disturbance of sensation or clumsiness of movement.
Ticks acquire the bacteria when they feed on birds or mammals that carry the organism in their blood. Although deer do not carry Lyme disease they help to maintain tick populations because they are important feeding hosts for adult ticks.

Lyme disease can infact cause a multitude of symptoms affecting all areas of the body generally caused by inflammation, by following the many links on this blog you can learn more about the symptoms of Lyme Disease.

My own symptoms were mainly arthritis and muscle weakness but some Peripheral Neuropathies, twitching and tingling sensations and the scariest symptom swallowing difficulties, Dysphargia. I had a constant sore throat which lasted years with no let up but mainly on one side, most peculiar. All gone now since long term antibiotic treatment following ILADS Guidelines