Lyme
disease — the great pretender
WNEP—ABC
Allentown, PA
by Jill Garrett
12 Apr 2004
Recognizing Lyme
disease symptoms could make a big difference to patients.
A Pennsylvania doctor,
recognized as a national expert, finds Lyme disease is often mistaken
for other serious illnesses. He calls Lyme disease “The Great Pretender.”
Symptoms include
fatigue, fever, joint pain, and rash. If there isn’t a rash, you
might be treated for something else and get little relief.
Doctor Gregory Bach
stopped in the Scranton area to get the word out. The Philadelphia area
doctor is on the board of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases
Society. He offers videos that show a young man suffering from a neurological
illness. He can barely get from the waiting area to the doctor’s
door. And a young mother goes into a trance when talking with the doctor.
She can move her eyes, but that’s it. Dr. Bach says before he became
their doctor, they were getting treatment for other illnesses. That’s
why Lyme disease gets the nickname, “The Great Pretender.”
“There’s
an organism that travels with Lyme disease called Babesia. It causes
asthma-like symptoms, so that’s another category. It can cause neurological
dysfunction, and psychiatric dysfunction, such as depression or bipolar
disorder. We’ve had cases of schizophrenia, and I just published
on cutting, which is self-mutation, associated with tic-borne diseases.”
Dr. Bach didn’t
always know this much about Lyme disease, but got interested when his
wife, Deborah, became a victim losing both hearing and eye sight. “...and
we did more research and we found the right person, and they referred
me, us, to a Lyme-literate doctor, and did the proper testing and that’s
what it came up to be. And within 10 days of going on the proper antibiotics,
I gained back 90 plus percent of my hearing.” And her sight also
came back.
Lizette Hess who
went into trances described her life before being diagnosed. “I was
exhausted; I was totally exhausted after that, just from freezing up for
a few seconds. I have three children: small children who had to see this
happening and wondering if I was going to die.”
The antibiotics to
treat Lyme disease are already on the market. Dr. Bach says the deer tick
isn’t the only tick to blame for problems. “It’s just not the little deer
tick. All major ticks can have the possibility of carrying it, although
the deer tick has the highest percentage.”
[
