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The Time Warp of Tick-Borne Illness

https://globallymealliance.org/time-warp-tick-borne-illness/?

by Jennifer Crystal

I’d already lost three years of my life to illness. Then I got a taste of resumed independence and health, only to have those intimations of well-being quashed once more. The rush to get back on track and catch up to my friends felt even more pressing when I relapsed. Time seemed to be moving too fast.

Time is a funny thing. As children we hope for time to pass quickly, so we can get to the next big milestone: a birthday, Christmas, middle school graduation, a driver’s license. When we turned 21, my friends and I were excited when we didn’t get carded in a bar, because that meant we looked our age. We always wanted to look and be older than we were.

When we turned 30 we hoped we would be carded, because that meant we looked younger than we were. As we aged, we were no longer hoping for time to pass quickly; we wanted it to slow down. We missed the good old days of college, when life was simpler. Now we couldn’t believe how fast time moved. In the blink of an eye friends were getting married, having babies, buying houses. Then we were forty and people were practically shouting, “Slow time down! We’re already at mid-life!”

As a patient of chronic tick-borne illness, I was having a different sort of mid-life crisis.

I had missed the latter half of my twenties to illness, and didn’t earn my graduate degree until my late thirties. At 40 I was just starting to look for the serious relationship and the serious job and the life plan that my contemporaries had figured out a decade earlier. Now, I still feel like I have a lot of catching up to do. It’s hard but I try to accept that I’m moving at my own pace and will achieve my goals in my own time, the same way I achieved remission over many years.

During the first five years that I battled tick-borne illness, I had one major relapse that set me back to square one. I was 28 years old. I’d already lost three years of my life to illness. Then I got a taste of resumed independence and health, only to have those intimations of well-being quashed once more. The rush to get back on track and catch up to my friends felt even more pressing when I relapsed. Time seemed to be moving too fast.

It also moved very slowly. I was all too quickly reminded how days drag on when you’re bedridden. It can be hard for healthy people to understand this, but now that I’ve stood on both sides of the time divide, I understand why it’s difficult for each side to understand the other.

When you’re healthy, you’re out living your life. In a day’s time you might work, take care of your kids, go grocery shopping, do laundry, run errands, put out small fires, and fall into bed at night realizing you never called so-and-so back or returned an email, because the busyness of daily life got in the way.

When you’re sick, you’re waiting all day for that phone call or email, because you have nothing else to do. You can’t work or even leave the house, and most days you’re too tired, and your brain fog is too wearying, to do “restful” activities like watch TV or read. You just sit there listening to the tick of the clock, waiting to get well, waiting for someone to call, waiting for something to happen. It’s excruciating.

The divide between healthy time and sick time can feel like a glass wall. You can see in to the other, healthierperson’s world, but you can’t step through the barrier and rejoin it. Sick people can envy healthy people because they’re able to do everyday things. But we don’t always understand that those things can be draining and overwhelming to the point that the healthy person can’t keep up with everything, including checking in on asick person.

On the flip side, healthy people can envy sick people because they think it sounds nice to have so much “free” time. They’d like to lounge around, to read or watch TV, but they don’t realize that the sick person doesn’t feel well enough to enjoy those basic activities. Living with chronic tick-borne illness is like having the flu and a hangover every single day, sometimes for years on end.

Being sick is not a vacation, and being healthy is not a walk in the park.

Sick people may eventually get well enough to cross the wall into the world of the healthy. Healthy people could take sick at any time. We can’t control when we will break through the glass wall dividing those two worlds. We can, however, peer closely through the glass, seeing more clearly what life looks like on the other side.

Opinions expressed by contributors are their own.

Jennifer Crystal is a writer and educator in Boston. She has written a memoir about her journey with chronic tick-borne illness, for which she is seeking representation. Contact her at: lymewarriorjennifercrystal@gmail.com.

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Uncategorized

Shocking New Study Finds That 137 Million Americans Suffered “Medical Financial Hardship in the Past Year”

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/shocking-new-study-finds-that-137-million-americans-suffered-medical-financial-hardship-in-the-past-year

Shocking New Study Finds That 137 Million Americans Suffered “Medical Financial Hardship In The Past Year”

May 2, 2019 by Michael Snyder

The healthcare system in the United States is deeply broken, and it is causing massive financial pain for millions of American families. Previously, I have published articles where I talked about how medical bills are the primary factor in two-thirds of all personal bankruptcies in the United States, and that Americans had to borrow a whopping 88 billion dollars last year to cover medical costs. This is happening even though more than 90 percent of all Americans have some form of health coverage. Thanks to soaring deductibles and health insurance policies that are absolutely riddled with loopholes, more Americans than ever are being wiped out by medical bills. And now a brand new study that was conducted by researchers from the American Cancer Society has discovered that 137.1 million Americans suffered “medical financial hardship in the past year”. The following comes directly from the study…

Approximately 137.1 million (95% CI 132.7–141.5) adults reported any medical financial hardship in the past year. Hardship is more common for material, psychological and behavioral domains in adults aged 18–64 years (28.9%, 46.9%, and 21.2%, respectively) than in adults aged ≥ 65 years (15.3%, 28.4%, and 12.7%, respectively; all p < .001). Lower educational attainment and more health conditions were strongly associated with hardship intensity in multivariable analyses in both age groups (p < .001). In the younger group, the uninsured were more likely to report multiple domains of hardship (52.8%), compared to those with some public (26.5%) or private insurance (23.2%) (p < .001). In the older group, individuals with Medicare only were more likely to report hardship in multiple domains (17.1%) compared to those with Medicare and public (12.1%) or Medicare and private coverage (10.1%) (p < .001).

We are the wealthiest nation on the entire planet, and we should have the greatest healthcare system.

This shouldn’t be happening.

And the conclusion that the study ultimately reached is that things are likely to get even worse as we move into the future…

Medical financial hardship is common in the USA, especially in adults aged 18–64 years and those without health insurance coverage. With trends towards higher patient cost-sharing and increasing health care costs, risks of hardship may increase in the future.

When I ran for Congress, I strongly stressed the need for a complete and total overhaul of our healthcare system, but unfortunately our current representatives in Washington don’t seem too interested in that.

Today, many Americans try to avoid our healthcare system as much as possible because they are afraid of being hit with absolutely ridiculous bills.

Just consider the case of 9-year-old Oakley Yoder. She went for a hike in the woods at summer camp, and a snake bite forced her to go to the hospital…

It was dusk as Oakley Yoder and the other summer camp kids hiked back to their tents at Illinois’ Jackson Falls last July. As the group approached a mound of boulders blocking the path, Oakley, then 9, didn’t see the lurking snake — until it bit a toe on her right foot.

“I was really scared,” Oakley said. “I thought that I could either get paralyzed or could actually die.”

So how much do you think her treatment cost?

A few hundred dollars?

A few thousand dollars?

Actually, the total bill was $142,938…

Total bill: $142,938, including $67,957 for four vials of antivenin ($55,577.64 was charged for air ambulance transport). The balance included a ground ambulance charge and additional hospital and physician charges, according to the family’s insurer, IU Health Plans.

This is yet another example that shows that our current system needs to be totally dismantled and rebuilt from scratch.

You could buy an entire house for $142,938.

Here are some more facts from a previous article that show just how dramatically the U.S. healthcare system has failed…

–3.7 trillion dollars was spent on health care in the United States in 2018. That breaks down to $10,739 per person.

-If our health care system was a country, it would have the fifth largest GDP on the entire planet.

–76 percent of Americans believe that they pay too much for the quality of health care that they receive.

-Out of the 36 counties in the OECD, the U.S. ranks 31st in infant mortality.

-Prescription drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States today.

-Pharmaceutical companies spend approximately 30 billion dollars a year to market their drugs to all of us.

–Nearly half of all U.S. doctors are considering leaving the field of medicine, and health insurance companies are the primary reason.

-The median charge for visiting an emergency room in the United States is well over a thousand dollars.

I could go on and on all day, but let me give you just one more example of how flawed our healthcare system has become.

John Kapoor, the billionaire founder of Insys Theraputics, was just found guilty of bribing doctors to prescribe high doses of a painkiller called Subsys…

Kapoor oversaw a marketing strategy at Insys that hired doctors as speakers at educational seminars as cover to pay them more than $1m to prescribe high doses of Subsys to patients who did not need it. Prosecutors said the seminars were no more than social gatherings at expensive New York restaurants followed by company sales reps taking the physicians to strip clubs and bars.

Prosecutors showed the jury spreadsheets of payments to doctors and how much the company profited from each bribe. In one instance, the company paid nearly $260,000 to two New York doctors who wrote more than $6m worth of Subsys prescriptions in 2014. Insys employees also posed as doctors to give insurance companies invented diagnoses to get approval for payments for the drug.

In this case justice was done, but the truth is that this sort of stuff happens in the medical world constantly.

Our entire healthcare system is now completely dominated by the pharmaceutical giants, the big health insurance companies and greedy corporate interests.

They don’t care about us. All they really care about is making as much money as possible, and if people get hurt in the process they are willing to live with that.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dreamand The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

**Comment**

To put medical insurance into perspective…..

My 96 year old doctor told me he remembered when medical insurance first started. It began only to bridge the gap from when farmers harvested crops and had to wait for payment after they went to market to be able to pay their medical bills.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

Category:

Activism, Uncategorized

Rickettsiales in Ticks Removed From Outdoor Workers From Georgia & Florida

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/25/5/18-0438_article

Rickettsiales in Ticks Removed from Outdoor Workers, Southwest Georgia and Northwest Florida, USA

Elizabeth R. Gleim¹

, L. Mike Conner, Galina E. Zemtsova, Michael L. Levin, Pamela Wong, Madeleine A. Pfaff, and Michael J. Yabsley DOI: 10.3201/eid2505.180438

The southeastern United States has multiple tick species that can transmit pathogens to humans. The most common tick species, Amblyomma americanum, is the vector for the causative agents of human ehrlichioses and southern tick-associated rash illness, among others (1). Dermacentor variabilis ticks can transmit the causative agent of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and Ixodes scapularis ticks can transmit the causative agents of Lyme disease, babesiosis, and human granulocytic anaplasmosis (1). Although less common in the region, A. maculatum ticks are dominant in specific habitats and can transmit the causative agent of Rickettsia parkeri rickettsiosis (1).

Persons who have occupations that require them to be outside on a regular basis might have a greater risk for acquiring a tickborne disease (2). Although numerous studies have been conducted regarding risks for tickborne diseases among forestry workers in Europe, few studies have been performed in the United States (2,3). The studies that have been conducted in the United States have focused on forestry workers in the northeastern region (2). However, because of variable phenology and densities of ticks, it is useful to evaluate tick activity and pathogen prevalence in various regions and ecosystems.

Burn-tolerant and burn-dependent ecosystems, such as pine (Pinus spp.) and mixed pine forests commonly found in the southeastern United States, have unique tick dynamics compared with those of other habitats (4). The objective of this study was to determine the tick bite risk and tickborne pathogen prevalence in ticks removed from forestry workers working in pine and mixed pine forests in southwest Georgia and northwest Florida, USA.

During June 2009–December 2011, forestry workers in southwestern Georgia (7 counties) and northwestern Florida (1 county) submitted ticks crawling on or attached to them. We identified ticks and tested them for selected pathogens (Appendix). Immature forms of the same species from the same day and person were pooled (<5 nymphs and <20 larvae) for testing.

A total of 53 persons submitted 362 ticks (Table). Excluding larvae, the most common tick species submitted was A. maculatum, followed by A. americanum, I. scapularis, and D. variabilis. On 4 occasions, 1 person submitted A. tuberculatum ticks (3 batches of larvae and 1 batch of nymphs) from a longleaf pine site in Baker County, Georgia. Average submissions per persons were 2.6 ticks (median 1 tick), but 1 person submitted 100 ticks. A total of 24 persons submitted ticks more than once, and they submitted an average of 0.08–6.5 ticks/month (overall average submission rate of 1.1 ticks/month). Three ticks were engorged (1 D. variabilis adult, 1 A. americanum nymph, and 1 Amblyomma sp. nymph); only the Amblyomma sp. nymph was positive for a pathogen (R. amblyommatis).

Rickettsia spp. prevalence was 36.4% in adult, 27.9% in nymphal, and 20% in larval A. americanum ticks; R. amblyommatis was the only species identified (Table).
Rickettsia spp. were detected in 23% of A. maculatum adults; R. amblyommatis was most common (6.0%), followed by R. parkeri (4.8%).
A previously detected novel Rickettsia sp. was identified in 10 of 11 A. tuberculatum larval pools and was reported by Zemtsova et al. (6). An additional pool of A. tuberculatum nymphs was tested in this study and also was positive for the novel Rickettsia sp.
E. chaffeensis was detected in 1 A. maculatum adult (prevalence 1.2%), and Panola mountain Ehrlichia sp. was detected in 2 A. maculatum adults (prevalence 2.4%) and 1 D. variabilis adult (prevalence 10%).
No ticks were positive for Borrelia spp., E. ewingii, or Anaplasma phagocytophilum.

Thus, forestry workers were found to encounter ticks on a regular basis, and peak encounter rates reflected previously reported tick seasonality in this region (4). Only 3 (0.8%) of the ticks submitted were engorged, indicating prompt removal of most ticks and thus low risk for pathogen transmission. A. maculatum, a fairly uncommon tick in the southeastern United States, was the most commonly submitted tick. However, A. maculatum ticks dominate in regularly burned pine ecosystems (4), which is where most of these workers spent their time.

We observed several unique findings related to pathogens during this study. Larvae and nymphs of A. tuberculatum ticks were submitted on multiple occasions, a tick rarely reported on humans (7). These findings in conjunction with the identification of a novel Rickettsia sp. (6), suggest that additional research is warranted. This study also identified E. chaffeensis and Panola Mountain Ehrlichia in A. maculatum ticks. Although A. americanum ticks are considered the primary vector of Ehrlichia spp., these pathogens have been occasionally reported in questing A. maculatum ticks, suggesting that this tick might be involved in their transmission cycles (5,8). We also detected Panola Mountain Ehrlichia in 1 D. variabilis tick. Thus, further research regarding these alternative tick species as potential vectors of these pathogens is warranted, particularly in the case of A. maculatum ticks, which were a common species on forestry workers and are widespread in this region (4).

At the time of this study, Dr. Gleim was a research scientist at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA. She is currently a disease ecologist at Hollins University, Roanoke, VA. Her research interests include wildlife and zoonotic diseases with a particular emphasis on tickborne diseases.

Acknowledgments

We thank the persons whom submitted ticks for this study and members of the Yabsley and Levin laboratories for providing laboratory assistance.

This study was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/University of Georgia (UGA) collaborative grant (#8212, Ecosystem Health and Human Health: Understanding the Ecological Effects of Prescribed Fire Regimes on the Distribution and Population Dynamics of Tick-Borne Zoonoses); the Oxford Research Scholars Program at Oxford College of Emory University; the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center, the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources (UGA); the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study (UGA) through the Federal Aid to Wildlife Restoration Act (50 Statute 917); and Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study sponsorship from fish and wildlife agencies of member states.

References

Stromdahl EY, Hickling GJ. Beyond Lyme: aetiology of tick-borne human diseases with emphasis on the south-eastern United States. Zoonoses Public Health. 2012;59(Suppl 2):48–64. DOIPubMed
Covert DJ, Langley RL. Infectious disease occurrence in forestry workers: a systematic review. J Agromed. 2002;8:95–111. DOIPubMed
Lee S, Kakumanu ML, Ponnusamy L, Vaughn M, Funkhouser S, Thornton H, et al. Prevalence of Rickettsiales in ticks removed from the skin of outdoor workers in North Carolina. Parasit Vectors. 2014;7:607. DOIPubMed
Gleim ER, Conner LM, Berghaus RD, Levin ML, Zemtsova GE, Yabsley MJ. The phenology of ticks and the effects of long-term prescribed burning on tick population dynamics in southwestern Georgia and northwestern Florida. PLoS One. 2014;9:e112174. DOIPubMed
Loftis AD, Kelly PJ, Paddock CD, Blount K, Johnson JW, Gleim ER, et al. Panola Mountain Ehrlichia in Amblyomma maculatum From the United States and Amblyomma variegatum (Acari: Ixodidae) From the Caribbean and Africa. J Med Entomol. 2016;53:696–8. DOIPubMed
Zemtsova GE, Gleim E, Yabsley MJ, Conner LM, Mann T, Brown MD, et al. Detection of a novel spotted fever group Rickettsia in the gophertortoise tick. J Med Entomol. 2012;49:783–6. DOIPubMed
Goddard J. A ten-year study of tick biting in Mississippi: implications for human disease transmission. J Agromed. 2002;8:25–32. DOIPubMed
Allerdice ME, Hecht JA, Karpathy SE, Paddock CD. Evaluation of Gulf Coast ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) for Ehrlichia and Anaplasma species. J Med Entomol. 2017;54:481–4.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=28031351&dopt=Abstract

Table

Table. Prevalence of Ehrlichia chaffeensis, PME, and Rickettsia spp. in ticks submitted by outdoor workers, southwestern Georgia and northwestern Florida, USA

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**Comment**

Again, folks down South should be taken seriously when they present with symptoms. BTW: Southern advocates tell me that STARI looks, smells, and feels just like Lyme disease.

Lyme IS in the South: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/10/25/hope-for-southerners/

The take home: Clark is finding borrelia (Lyme) strains in the South that the current CDC two-tier testing will never pick up in a thousand years.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285584725_Isolation_of_live_Borrelia_burgdorferi_sensu_lato_spirochetes_from_patients_with_undefined_disorders_and_symptoms_not_typical_for_Lyme_diseases

The take home: Clark found live Bbsl (bissettii-like strain) in people from the Southeast who had undefined disorders not typical of LD, and were treated for LD even though they were seronegative, proving that B. bissetti is responsible for worldwide human infection.

He also showed DNA of Bbsl in Lone Star ticks which might be a bridge vector of transmission to humans.

Dr. Clark was the first to report finding LD spirochetes in animals and ticks in South Carolina, as well as in wild lizards in South Carolina and Florida. He has documented the presence of LD Borrelia species, Babesia microti, Anaplasma phagocytophilum, Rickettsia species, and other tick-borne pathogens in wild animals, ticks, dogs, and humans in Florida and other southern states.