In the past couple of weeks I have had three calls from people who have either tested positive for Lyme Disease, or have Lyme symptoms but have been told that, “It’s not really a problem in the South” by a medical person.

Understand that I am not a physician, but your Uncle Bob is probably the most knowledgeable Lyme Disease victim you know. I had it for about 10 years before it was finally diagnosed and treated, but everyone thought it was simply arthritis working on a body that was too susceptible to arthritis pain because of over 23 broken bones and another 15 major joint injuries.

My own doctor told me, “Son, you’ve just played too much football; now you’ve got to pay the piper.”
Understand also that this was back in the day when Lyme Disease was just beginning to spread from its first base of operations in New England.

It is called “Lyme Disease” because it was originally misdiagnosed as an outbreak of juvenile arthritis in Old Lyme, Conn., following the passing of Hurricane Jennie over Plum Island, a Guv’mint biological testing facility that was experimenting with mutating spirochete bacteria for the Defense Department. An oak tree was blown down upon the roof of that testing lab, and undoubtedly the bacteria crossed the bay with the winds and infected Old Lyme.

Dr. Willy Burgdorfer later isolated and identified the causative bacteria, which bears his name today. So, 35 years ago, it was indeed a problem pretty much only in the northeast, where it began, but those days are long past. I got it from a Southern tick back in 1978, although I was not tested and treated for Lyme until 1989, because of a magazine story.

I was doing a lot of writing back then for magazines and had been contacted by Conservationist magazine to do an article on Lyme Disease. I turned it down at first, saying, “I don’t do that kind of writing; you call Neill, you get humor.”  

And the editor responded with, “Well, do us a humorous article on Lyme Disease, then, and we’ll pay you a thousand bucks for it.” Boy howdy, I could do that, I told him! So I went to doing the research on Lyme Disease, and within a week realized, “Hey! I have all these symptoms myownself!”  

You know you’re in trouble when you have to go check out a three-month-old magazine to show your doctor what you think is your affliction. I finally just called the Lyme Foundation in Connecticut and asked, “where is the closest doctor to Brownspur, Miss., who can recognize, diagnose, and treat Lyme Disease?”

The lady says, “We don’t have any idea where Brownspur is (it’s between Bourbon and Goose Hollow) but we have a Dr. McCullars in Mobile who is awfully good at treating Lyme patients.”

That was close enough for me. I called, got an appointment with George, and had the highest “titer” he had ever tested for, he later told me. I was treated with 200 mg of doxycycline for almost a year and my arthritis pretty much was cured, because turned out that it was Lyme arthritis.

The spirochete bacteria will always be in my system because I had had it for so long, but if one detects the disease in the first few months, it can be knocked out completely with perhaps six weeks of antibiotics.  I am not a doctor, okay?

But I have written this weekly syndicated newspaper column for 25 years come next week, and have written a Lyme Disease column at least yearly. I get an awful lot of calls from readers who have Lyme symptoms. I visited Dr. George back in May, and he speculated that I’ve probably sent him 300 to 500 patients in over 20 years.  

Not all of them had Lyme, of course, but most of them did, yet their own doctors had not recognized it, sadly. Heck, I’ve even had some doctors who have called ME, to ask about symptoms and treatment. Twice, local doctors sent patients for me to look at the rashes. I repeat: I am not a doctor!

Lyme is a very real problem in the South, and has been diagnosed in nearly every state: heck, I’ve had calls from Minnesota, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Utah, as well as Southern states.  And I’m just a knowledgeable victim, not a doctor!