Posted 3/11/2010 4:09 PM (GMT 0)
I saw this same story recently. I sure do hope that she wins and that this initiates the way for better, more accurate diagnostic testing. I have watched pretty much the same thing go on in the CFS, IC, IBS, and fibro communities, but at least with Lyme there is an actual known bacterium to look for. With those others there isn't even that, yet they are now taken more seriously, believed. I find that really had to swallow!
On a related note, in my former nonprofit career (related to the above chronic conditions) I worked mainly with people from the DC area (the main office is located in Rockville, MD). And still, when I got the diagnosis of Lyme in 2005, I was working with a lobbyist who basically told me that I shouldn't be sick because both her brother and her brother inlaw (from the DC area) had Lyme and they are just fine. What she could not understand is that I had had the darned disease for most of my life before it was diagnosed! She really insulted me with her ignorance, not knowing the difference between early diagnosis and not finding it for years. And I had the same thing happen to me with a high-powered NYC attorney/Board member who, when I told her that I have Lyme, shrugged me off and told me that she, her husband, and just about everyone she knows had already had Lyme at least once and they are now over it. She said that they all have summer homes on Long Island and were prone to "getting" it. HUH? And this woman has some of the chronic illnesses that I mentioned above? What is going on? It makes no sense. Not one bit of sense.