LETTER TO CONGRESS

, (Sent to Sen. Blumenthal. A Testimony for Congress.)

I used to be a Certified Public Accountant. In fact, I earned the fifth highest score on the Oregon CPA exam. Because of Lyme Disease--something I just learned last month--I lost the ability to practice five years ago. The doctors decided my problems were all in my head. I even spent time in a mental ward at the hospital: misdisagnosed and misdosed with medication for a mental disorder I did not have. 

A friend saved my life when she realized I was a risk to myself: not wanting to ruin the rest of my husband's life, nor that of my children's. I spent the next four years under the fog of psychiatric medicines, losing my identity eventually: even in the eyes of my family before a Stanford doctor heard my story. I will be forever grateful for his observation and kindness.

The Stanford doctor who diagnosed me had [also been] misdiagnosed. He'd been given a death sentence. Lou Gehrig's disease, a year earlier. Deciding to conduct his own second opinion, he discovered that he had Lyme [and other neurological tick-born illnesses.] With his *own life on the line* he determined the best course of treatment and not a single MD in our state would treat him. He spent the next year traveling back east for treatment. A year later, he is back to practicing medicine--enduring high dose piccline antibiotics. 

I just started treatment a week ago. After hearing my story from my husband, I was in his office the next business day. It was in his office that I learned that I had all 15 indicators of Lyme disease...crossing over so many systems in my body that it could be nothing other than infectious. The tests came back positive for Lyme disease to a 98% specificity. [Not the ERISA and Western Blot tests required by the American Medical Association. According to these tests and the CDC/IDSA I did NOT have Lyme Disease.]

Not being able to take care of my home, I tried harder to fail than I ever did in [my days of] success. [The efforts of] my days have felt like the widow's might, deeds too small for anyone to notice, for many years. The injustice of misjudgment has been perhaps *as painful* as the misery of the physical, emotional, and mental affects that Lyme has on the body. I am grateful to be freed from this injustice...

However, now I see the battle has simply changed to another front. In trying to seek treatment: the new injustice appears to be that the system in our country is too bogged down politically *to protect* and help its citizens! I was the proverbial Zebra in horseland (in the psychiatric and neurologic communities) having all 15 indicators of Lyme, yet I slipped through the cracks for the past five years! 

We lost our home two years ago and had to declare bankruptcy. My daughter, who is 15, has had to step in as mom when I crash and can no longer  [function]. I have to prepare meals in the middle of the night because of insomnia, debilitating vertigo, and the sensory overstimulation of the small living quarters of our first home. We’re [trying] to unify and work together: but all of us want *Me* back!