Lyme Disease Controversy Comes to the Capitol (NH)

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Lyme Disease Controversy Comes to the Capitol

By Elaine Grant <http://www.nhpr.org/user/5188/track> on Monday,

February 1, 2010.

One of the most vitriolic debates in medicine has come to the State House.

Desperate Lyme Disease patients say they are fighting for their lives.

They say doctors who treat their illness with long-term antibiotics are

persecuted by the medical establishment.

They want lawmakers to pass legislation that they say will free doctors

to treat Lyme Disease as they see fit.

On the other side are doctors equally convinced that long-term

antibiotics are both ineffective and dangerous.

NHPR health reporter Elaine Grant has more.

For years, patients suffering from a host of symptoms that they call

chronic Lyme Disease have said they encounter difficulty getting treated

appropriately.

With its so-called " bucket of symptoms " that mimic numerous other

ailments, Lyme Disease can be tough to diagnose.

And for a variety of political reasons, it can be even harder to treat.

Consider the case of Kettman, a fifty-six year old mother of four

from Bow.

Several years ago, she went to the hospital with chest pains -- but

tests showed no heart disease.

She developed numerous other symptoms, and for five years she searched

for a diagnosis.

Kettman: They sent me to neurologists, endocrinologists,

rheumatologists, they sent me to Dartmouth, they sent me back and forth

for nine months to Brigham and Women's looking for a tumor, they were

trying to rule out MS and lupus. "

At one point, she was so crippled that her husband had to carry her to

the bathroom.

When they asked her family doctor to test her for Lyme Disease, the

doctor refused to treat her.

Finally, a doctor in Maine diagnosed her with chronic Lyme.

Read the rest and comment at http://www.nhpr.org/node/29157

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