Lyme Sufferer Shoots and Kills Pastor in Church

A man in Illinois went into a church on Sunday and gunned down the pastor. His parents said he suffered from mental illness brought on by Lyme infection. This is not a common symptom of Lyme disease, but since Lyme can attack your neurological system, it seems believable to me that it could affect someone’s judgment to the point where they didn’t know right from wrong or harbored irrational thoughts. Could this help raise awareness of Lyme disease? It shouldn’t have to come at the expense of an innocent person’s life.

Lynette continues to show gradual improvement. It’s not always obvious, but over a two or three day period you can see changes for the better. I am going out of town the 3rd weekend of March on business. I will miss being here immensely, but I’m looking forward to seeing several days of improvement all at once.

Lynette has another phone consult with Dr. Fishman at the beginning of April. In the meantime she is trying to formulate her strategy to get local care, hopefully from a Lyme sympathetic MD. She’s got a line on 3 different infectious disease doctors. We just hope they aren’t shackled by the status quo. Lynette is trying to hang in there until her appointment with Dr. Jemsek in South Carolina at the end of April.

Dr. Jemsek has an interesting history. He treated HIV/AIDS patients through the 80’s and 90’s. In the beginning most of these patients died. As things progressed in HIV treatment more patients lived. He started attracting Lyme patients because of his reputation of listening, being compassionate, and treating of the person, rather than the patient.

He successfully treated many, many people for Lyme disease. There was an extremely small minority of people who didn’t improve under his care. Some complaints were issued to the NC medical board. When the insurance companies got wind of this, they started denying him payment due to overtreatment. He had to file for bankruptcy when the insurance companies pulled out on him. The state of NC sued him and he was forced to move his practice to Fort Mill, South Carolina.

Here is a link to the remarks that he presented to the North Carolina Medical board during his final appearance. This exposes yet another example of the Lyme ignorance and complacency in the medical community:

http://www.jemsekspecialty.com/ncmb-remarks.php

Lyme disease is named for a town in Connecticut that had an unusual cluster of adolescent arthritis cases in the 70’s. It’s named for its origin, Lyme, CT. It does not belong to the town. It’s Lyme disease, not Lyme’s disease. Or you can just call it Borreliosis.