Our Story
By Joseph P. Orban, III

Over the past year, I have been touched by Lyme disease in many ways. Little did I know that Lyme Disease had played a part in our family for over 15 years.

This past February, I started to become very dizzy and had a mental fog. Unable to concentrate, I soon dropped out of my masters degree program, which I was attending after work. As the weeks went on, my dizziness turned into a profound "seasickness" feeling that lasted for weeks. Unable to eat much, I started to lose weight. Soon I started to have anxiety problems, blurred vision, memory loss, weakness on my right side, and flushing. In time, I started to have profound feelings of faintness.

One night, I ended up in the emergency room because I could barely keep from passing out. I had noticed how my symptoms would come and go, just as if someone had flipped a switch. Up until February, I was very happy with everything in my life, and all was going well. Suddenly, at 27 years old, my life was falling apart.

After about three months of numerous tests, (including Lyme tests, which I asked for) nothing was showing up. Not once did the doctors mention Lyme disease, even though many of the medical technicians who administered the tests mentioned it. My doctors were perplexed. At first, they told me it was an inner ear virus. As time went on, my primary care physician started inferring there were psychological reasons for my illness. He often pointed toward work as a source of stress. I was adamant about the fact that I loved my job as an engineer, and found work to be very enjoyable. In fact, it was my inability to concentrate on projects I had handled with ease just months before that led me to believe there was a physical problem. Something didn't fit the picture. It all came to a head when he wanted to prescribe and antidepressant.

It wasn't until I started looking around on the Internet to find what could possibly be making me so sick that I found a newsgroup about Lyme disease. I couldn't believe that others were out there with the same problems I had.

Through the net, I also started to meet many people with multiple sclerosis who actually had Lyme. I had spent the past fifteen years watching my mother slowly digress from the effects of chronic progressive multiple sclerosis. Over the years our family had grown together to help her as best we could. She is now barely able to move her arms, and is confined to an electric wheelchair. I would read these stories to her, with the hope that maybe a miracle could fall upon our family. That was a major turning point for my family and I.

With the help of the Lyme Disease foundation, I found a very knowledgeable doctor who has since helped me immensely. He gave me the latest Lyme tests, which were positive. I am now on IV treatment, and look forward to a recovery in the future.

My Lyme doctor was very interested in my mom's health history. As a young girl growing up in Connecticut, she had rheumatic fever and was given penicillin as a prophylactic treatment to prevent strep throat. She maintained a daily pill of penicillin for the next twenty years. In 1981, at her doctor's recommendation, she stopped taking penicillin. He told her he wasn't totally sure she ever had rheumatic fever so many years before. It was that year she began to lose strength in her leg.

After many doctors and a few years later, mom was finally diagnosed with chronic progressive multiple sclerosis. Over the years, she had strange growing rashes and periodic hair loss, which no doctor could explain. She had a Western Blot Lyme test in the late 80's, which we were told was negative. Recently, we made her an appointment with my new Lyme doctor. He gave her the latest round of current Lyme tests, which to our amazement came back positive.

One evening, I came home to find my parents both taken by emotion. After asking what was wrong, she told me that the antibiotics were helping her. Throughout the fifteen-year battle to fight her disease, not once did anything help her. After many months on antibiotics, she has begun to move her toes and fingers  something she had lost the ability to do many years ago. Although the road ahead will be a long on, we now have hope that had all but disappeared over the years. She is grateful to be given the opportunity for improvement.

Over the past year, I have spent a lot of time reading about the different aspects of this disease; diagnosis, treatments, politics and scientific advances. Although many people are led to believe it is an arthritic disease, it is a multi-systemic infection. In my case, it attacked my neurological system. I never had one ache from it. Another misunderstanding is the interpretation of the more common antibody tests. When people take any sort of medical test, most automatically believe they are very accurate. My experience has taught me otherwise. I can only imagine the national uproar if the HIV test was as unreliable. We need more government support for education, insurance legislation to protect those who need treatments, and funding for additional treatment research. It is my hope that our experience will inspire others to educate themselves about the many complexities of this disease.

For more information on Lyme disease see: Lots Of Links On Lyme Disease

Last updated on 29 December 2000 by
Art Doherty
Lompoc, California
doherty@utech.net

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