Alessandra Bocchi

The mystery of chronic Lyme disease

Why have alternative treatments been ignored?

  • From Spectator Life
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I struggled to pull myself out of bed in the morning. I slept for hours at lunch breaks and was having a hard time focusing. I was working six days a week as an editor at one of the world’s largest newspapers. I needed to concentrate. It was my first year there on a fixed-term contract. I didn’t have the security of knowing I would be hired afterwards; I had limited scope to make mistakes. Articles that required extensive fact-checking, style correction and careful proofreading felt like an insurmountable obstacle. What was wrong with me?

I booked a doctor’s appointment to check my vitamin levels. I’m anaemic, so thought that could have been the cause. Perhaps it was simply lockdown fatigue – after all, lacking external stimuli and human connections and working from a laptop at home could well affect motivation. The doctor suggested I test for Lyme disease, just in case. ‘What’s Lyme disease?’ I asked. ‘Don’t worry – just test for it, you never know,’ she responded. A week later I received a call from the doctor’s office: ‘All your vitamin levels are regular, but you tested positive for Lyme disease. Sorry about that. I suggest you see a specialist immediately.’

I told a friend and she panicked: ‘Do you know that your face can become paralysed? That’s what happened to one of my friends from school.’ I started researching the condition online, where I learned that Lyme disease – largely caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, transmitted through the bite of an infected tick – can lead to debilitating long-term side-effects if left untreated: fatigue, muscle pain, brain fog, cognitive impairment, face paralysis, memory loss and depression. On Twitter, one user said: ‘I had Lyme disease way back which went undiagnosed for two years… Later I found myself in a car, on a road, with no idea where I was.

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