Erica’s Fight Against Chronic Lyme Disease » Jenna's Video Lyme Blog

I just came across this video account of Erica Volker's Lyme story. It's very intense, so make sure you're ready to see a serious case of neurological late-stage Lyme. The good news is that she is on the mend. Hard to believe, since in some of the videos her full-body tremors are so incredibly pronounced. I encourage you to show this to friends and send the link around. I have gone through much of what Erica has, but without the many doctors who misdiagnosed me. I was lucky to be diagnosed earlier or at least in an earlier stage. (Although it was after 30 years of initial ifection!) Despite many forms of treatment, however, my tremors and neuropathy (especially in my legs) continue to worsen, interrupting my sleep and making daily activities such as walking, cooking, dressing, and socializing increasingly difficult.

Erica's case is a classic example of how often doctors who don't understand that Lyme is a multi-system and multi-microbe disease that can require long-term treatment with different medicines for each pathogen. A single tick can deliver a payload consisting of a large number of pathogens. Scientists may not yet have identified all of them, some researchers speculate.

Ticks that transmit B. burgdorferi to humans can also carry and transmit several other parasites, such as Theileria microti and Anaplasma phagocytophilum, which cause the diseases babesiosis and human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA), respectively. Among early Lyme disease patients, depending on their location, 2–12% will also have HGA and 2–40% will have babesiosis. Ticks in certain regions, including the lands along the eastern Baltic Sea, also transmit tick-borne encephalitis. Some ticks can carry Bartonella, Ehrlichea, and Protomyxzoa.

As you can imagine, the number of permutations of actual infections in a given patient can vary widely. Thus, each patient's symptoms and presentation can be unique and vastly different from another patient's. Add to this the fact that Borrelia is called the Great Imitator (similar to Syphilis) because it can invade different organ system and thus imitate the symptoms of over 200 different diseases. Considering all of the above, t's no wonder that doctors have extreme difficulty diagnosing the disease.

Click here to see Erica's video:

http://neuro-lyme.com/videoblog/ericas-fight-against-chronic-lyme-disease/