Special Report: Lyme Disease Part 1

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My name is Denny Swenson. I live on the Canton/Milton line. I mean that literally — our house is half in Canton and half in Milton. I live in a beautiful house, in a beautiful neighborhood with my husband, Win, my 10-year-old daughter, Reilly, our dog and two cats.

Three years ago, I was bit by a tick. I never saw the tick even though I shower after my walks and take all the usual precautions when I am outside. I got a bulls-eye rash, high fevers, aching jaw, and migratory joint pain. My doctor saw these as obvious signs of Lyme disease and gave me an antibiotic. It was a battle and took a few weeks before I could get out of bed. And then it took months before the lethargy finally lifted.

I learned that many of my neighbors have been battling Lyme disease for years. Along with me and my husband, who has now had it twice, the woman next door has had it, the woman across the street and her husband have had it, and her mother has had it three times. Down the street, another couple and their daughter have had Lyme disease, and a couple houses down, another family has had multiple cases of it, too. I haven’t even made it to the nearby school bus stop yet!

At the bus stop, one of the dads has also had Lyme disease. His has progressed to an advanced stage and is now affecting his nervous system. He needs to juggle medications to manage the symptoms. He never got the bulls-eye rash or discovered a tick. Two and a half years ago, when his shoulder started aching and he got a vicious headache, he assumed it was the flu and went to bed to get rest. Three days later his wife pulled him out of bed and dragged him to the hospital. It was Lyme.

After 15 weeks of antibiotics and months of grueling recovery, he got the courage to venture into his yard. He wore clothes treated with permetherin. He paid a lawn service to spray his yard. He cleaned up all the leaf litter and put three-foot-high mulch borders and hardscape around the perimeter between his lawn and woods. He placed Damminix tick tubes around his property according to the directions.

“I was trying to do all the things that you are supposed to do to mitigate the ticks,” he said. But he got bit again, and within weeks his symptoms came raging back.

This past summer he paid a landscaper to come in to help him with yard work. He did the less risky work and, as before, took every precaution to prevent tick exposure. And when he came inside he immediately removed and ran his clothes through a hot dryer. His wife checked him over with a magnifying glass.

“I lived in fear of my wife and daughter getting this,” he said. “I ended up getting Lyme disease a third time, and despite all our efforts at prevention and detection, my 7-year-old daughter got it too. The infectious disease specialist told me that I have to completely stop going out into the yard. With my level of nerve damage, I simply can’t afford to get it again.”

He is now looking into a fence but understands that mice, early-stage deer-tick carriers, can come through a deer fence. The fence may lessen the deer tick population in his yard, but they would still be there.

Unfortunately, our neighborhood story is anything but unique. As the deer population on the East Coast has increased over recent years, the deer tick population has multiplied as well.

This visual is from the Centers for Disease Control. A dot is placed within the county of residence for each confirmed case of Lyme disease. According to the CDC, Massachusetts had 189 confirmed cases of Lyme disease in 1995, and that grew to 4,019 confirmed cases in 2009.

Experts agree that Lyme disease cases have been grossly underreported for a variety of reasons. But even with the underreporting issue, you can see a rapid rise in cases.

We did a survey of households in the Green Street area where I live. Here are some of the results:

* 30 households responded to the survey. Within those 30 households, 18 people have had Lyme disease, and with reoccurrences there have been a total of 30 incidents of Lyme disease in those 30 households.

* 96.5 percent of the respondents are interested in curbing the deer tick population.

* 83.3 percent believe this is a public health concern for our neighborhood.

The comment area of the survey was interesting. Many people feel a strong need to curb the deer population. In addition to the human health concerns, there was concern about vegetation damage in our area and quite a bit of concern that the town or state is not doing anything.

(Click on page 2 below to continue reading)

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avatar Posted by on Apr 14 2011. Filed under Featured Content, Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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