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Waking to life with Lyme disease
(10-16-2008)By NATALIE HOFFMAN Register Staff Writer Too exhausted to brush at a critter creeping across her face, Lupe Herrera went back to sleep during a church camping trip 15 months ago. But moments later, pain brought her slumber to an excruciating halt. "The left side of my brain and face was burning. My ear felt as if it was going to blow out," she said. "My neck and shoulders were so stiff that I couldn't look up or down and my throat felt as if someone was squeezing me to death." Herrera - a 40-year-old Napa resident - didn't know it yet, but a tick had just infected her with Lyme disease. Often tricky to diagnose because it can wreak havoc on the body in a variety of ways, Lyme disease symptoms can mimic those of mental illness, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and other illnesses, according to the California Lyme Disease Association. Caused by a bacteria called a spirochete, Lyme Disease is typically spread to humans through bites from infected deer ticks, most of which are so young they're smaller than the head of a pin and therefore easy to miss, according to CALDA. Dr. Karen Smith, the public health officer for Napa County, said although patients rarely die from Lyme disease, the illness is "very debilitating ... and early detection is important." Lyme Disease patients may suffer from more than a dozen symptoms, including flu-like illness, rash, facial paralysis, heart palpitations, chest pain, extreme fatigue, depression, panic attacks, joint pain and swelling, shortness of breath and a host of other medical problems, according to CALDA. Although a red bull's-eye rash is one of the classic symptoms of the illness, only between 35 and 59 percent of infected people develop it, according to the agency. For Herrera, getting a diagnosis was especially tricky. She said her family doctor told her she did not have the illness because she didn't have a rash. Next, she visited an ear, nose and throat specialist and Herrera's test eventually came back positive for the disease. After undergoing a 20-day-long regimen of antibiotic treatments, her symptoms lessened but soon returned. Herrera said she was feeling worse than before treatment. "In the meantime, all my symptoms ... returned with a vengeance and I got some new ones. The left side of my body was going numb, my heart starts racing as if it was going to jump out of my chest," she said. "I started to sweat at night and go from hot to cold. I was having difficulty walking, speaking, swallowing (and) my hands started trembling." After visiting yet another specialist, she ended up under the care of a doctor who specializes in Lyme Disease, she said. Herrera, a self-proclaimed "faith-based person" who is now unemployed and does not have health insurance, said her advice to others who contract the illness is that they become their own advocate and seek treatment from a Lyme Disease specialist. "I'm trying to wake up Napa County, because nobody is talking about this," she said. In the meantime, Herrera is following a treatment regimen at home, where she lives with her daughter, 18-year-old Ashley Zaragoza and son, 19-year-old Gabriel Zaragoza, who regularly pitches in to help his mother pay the rent. Herrera's kitchen counter is stocked with more than $1,500 worth of antibiotics and supplements, which she said a pharmaceutical assistance program helps to pay for. "Very few physicians know how to interpret the test accurately. ... And like any other tests, there will be false positives and false negatives," Smith said, adding that a sound diagnosis depends on accurate assessment of patients' symptoms in addition to blood tests. For some, she said, Lyme disease presents a lucrative business opportunity. Private lab companies are sprouting up and claiming to have new and accurate testing methods, Smith said, adding that some of the resulting "non-accredited" tests are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and are "marketed very aggressively." Although the majority of cases are diagnosed "most commonly in northeastern, mid-Atlantic, and north-central states," according to the CDC, cases of Lyme disease are reported in California. Locally, Smith said, between two and three cases of the disease are typically diagnosed in Napa each year. "In virtually all cases, however, they were infected in another area with high rates of Lyme Disease. ... The risk of infection is low (locally), but it is important that people be aware that the risk does exist and take measures to protect themselves," Smith said, adding that physicians are required by law to report all cases of the illness to the Napa County Public Health Department. About 20,000 Americans are diagnosed with Lyme disease every year, and the illness is "the most common vector-borne disease in the United States," according to the CDC. According to CALDA, "The CDC ... does not include people who have Lyme disease but who are never diagnosed because of widespread use of insensitive tests which miss 44 percent of the cases. Taking this into account, there may be as many as 343,616 unreported cases in addition to the reported cases, for a grand total of 613,616 cases annually." Smith said Lyme Disease is probably not underreported in California. "In fact, if anything, I think that it may be overreported a little bit because of the confusion on who actually should get a Lyme disease test and the fact that the test isn't really specific. It has some crossover with some other organisms of the same type," she said. To learn more about Lyme disease, visit www.lymedisease.org
