Posted 1/26/2014 10:28 PM (GMT 0)
Hello! I'm a Spirrochette!
You know me by the name of my trail: Lyme Disease; and I am legion.
If you were my size you would see me as being similar to your wine cork-screw, only with a fur coat on. I reproduce primarily within certain field mice, and I have been flown around the world largely by geese. Lately in the U.S. I have become well traveled c/o 'wild' turkeys. (I certainly thank North Texas and California for extending the range of Turkeys into those vast areas). While Deer are labelled as our carrier, those days are over. And thankfully, in California there has been a huge population of my favorite Ticks that have just been wating for us.
Sometimes your immune system presents me with problems, fortunately most of the action is against my fur-coat, which I easily shed, as I burrow away from those nasty Cytokines. My favorite places to hold-up are in places where the blood supply of white blood cells is low; joints (the bigger the better), cartilage, and ligament fibers. A knee (or two) is a fave, and the spinal joints are special fun, because as the cartilege presents little to burrow in, the adjacent tissues along the brain stem offers a fantastic place to explore, and penetrate. After about a year and a half, I'm so buried, the antibodies and their team dissapate to levels below easy (Western Blot) detection. If I'm insulted with Antibiotics, many of my brethern will die, their parts and pieces will re-activate the immune system (again) for a time; -the damage may even become worse.
You see, I'm so burrowed into your cells, your immune system becomes confused... it attacks good tissues, as well as me, it's a serendipity as to just which 'self protein' your immune system accidentally picks on, but the protein that his 'heart' like is not uncommon. My name frequently becomes 'MS'; if you doubt this, simply compare the geographic incidence of Lyme's disease, MS,.. and even Turkeys! HA! (Some of these doctors, and certainly the CDC are so dim in this obvious fact! ). Early Alzheimer? Colitis? Sjogrens? Sjogrens masked as MS?Those are simply roads that I take with the help of an immune system that's off-track, and the daily goal becomes dealing with symptoms, not me. I can even screw-up your blood pH, so that calcium absorption fails, the liver becomes marginal, and in two years of infection you won't be able to count all the 'medical specialists' you'll need on one hand.
Have a nice day!