Four years later, Lyme victim still battling disease

By Cheryl K. Chumley
06/07/2005

Next month marks the four-year anniversary of Meredith Opstad's battle with Lyme disease.

"In July, it will have been four years ago that I pulled the tick out of the top of my head," said the Midland wife and mother of two. "Three days later, I had flu-like symptoms."

And nearly $50,000 later, she still suffers.

The reason, according to her own research and the words of Lilian Peake, health director for the Rappahannock-Rapidan Health District, is that "Lyme disease is one of the more ... challenging" diseases to diagnose.

If caught early, antibiotics prove a successful, fairly simple and rapid treatment for Lyme disease. But without early diagnosis -- as in Opstad's case -- the disease can progress unfettered, bringing fatigue, pain and other symptomatic illnesses that are maddeningly similar to other health problems. That can lead to further complications with cure.

"The whole thing with Lyme is it can produce so many symptoms, it's scary," she said.



The onset of Opstad's Lyme

Three weeks after removing the tick, Opstad went to the doctor because her "chest was hurting so bad that I thought I was having a heart attack."

It was then that she discovered the cause of the pain; the doctor's prescribed blood test yielded a positive for Lyme.

And so began Opstad's steady progression of physician visits and search for relief.

"I went to an antibiotics specialist," she said, where she was diagnosed with the Epstein-Barr virus, mononucleosis, chronic fatigue and about six different strains of influenza, she recalled.

Epstein-Barr, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is one of the most common human viruses, but it is dangerous because 35 to 50 percent of the time, it leads to infectious mononucleosis.

From this stage of illness, which carries symptoms of fever, sore throat and swollen glands, "a swollen spleen or liver ... may develop," as well as "heart problems or ... central nervous system" complications, CDC reports.

With Opstad, her symptoms had progressed to such a stage that her then-doctor commented, "I can't believe you're walking."



The tribulations of treatment

With diagnosis of Lyme underlying all, Opstad next sought the medical assistance of a specialist in Washington, D.C.

"My Lyme had centralized in my joints and in the area of my sternum," she said. "It wasn't neurological, and why it attacked there, I don't know. But I know (it brings) these aches ... like the flu."

Treatment from the D.C.-based Lyme specialist included antibiotics, herbal supplements, multivitamins -- more than "a dozen pills a day," she said.

"I take easily now 30 pills a day," she said. "But it would be between 30 and 50 a day if I stuck to the regimen."

Cost, along with a reluctance to down medicine like candy, prevents her from taking all the prescribed medications. She has progressively weaned herself from some of those pills perceived least necessary.

At the time of initial treatment, the pills prescribed in her daily medical regimen, along with her doctor's care, did start to affect her for the better.

She began to feel optimistic about treatment. But her hope for recovery soon dwindled, and her physician's parting words aptly summarized the frustration with the disease that she was beginning to feel.

"The last thing he did for me was intravenous medicine, and I had to have a home nurse come in and check me. I did it myself, and after two weeks I felt better," Opstad said. "But then I went back to feeling poor."

Her doctor's advice provided little comfort. "This is about all I can do for you," Opstad recounted the doctor as saying.

"I don't know if it was too many antibiotics or what, or if it was (a symptom of) the Lyme, but my liver ached constantly," she said. "It feels like a runner's cramp."

Following brief stints with allergy and acupuncture therapies, with little to no positive results, Opstad was ultimately advised to take an alternative path -- one that took her across the border to Mexico for a weeks-long intensive treatment plan that has yet to be approved in the United States.



Crossing the border

"The reason I went there was ... that the things he did are not approved in the United States," Opstad said. "I was hooked up for six weeks to an intravenous saline salt therapy solution. Vitamin C was really big, he did things like live cell shots ... and I do feel more energy than I used to feel."

The Ingles Hospital and Integrative Medical Center is located in Tijuana, Mexico. On its Web site, the clinic characterizes itself as "one of the most progressive (of such facilities) available today."

It offers medical care that ranges from nutritional and neurological to chiropractic and homeopathic or alternative, according the Web site.

Ingles Hospital is connected to the United States by way of Chula Vista, Calif., and the Bradford Research Institute, whose founding professor and researcher, Dr. Robert Bradford, offers a variety of therapies different from what the usual physician might advise.

In Opstad's case, the treatment plan in Mexico -- a six-week, $28,000 venture -- included adherence to a "strict organic diet," she said, and "detoxification of my whole system."

"I had the IV in me 14 hours a day," she said. "One thing I learned about Lyme is that it hides ... in red cells, in lymph nodes, and the main thing they tried to do was detoxify my whole body, because Lyme is always excreting these nasty things into your system."

The six weeks proved emotional at times; the drastic change in diet and cleansing of body systems proved shocking, Opstad said, and difficult to bear.

"Near the end, I became anemic," she said. "My body was not responding toward the end of the treatment. It did at first ... but then they had to kind of double up on everything. So I had to get a transfusion."



A cautiously optimistic end

That was last year, she said, and since she is back in Fauquier County, she feels better. Still, Opstad adds, she is not completely cured. She still struggles with pain, sudden fatigue, flu-like symptoms -- all the while battling worries that the money for her ongoing treatments for nutritional support and alternative therapies, as well as for necessary pills, will run out.

"If I sit down, that's when I feel the worst," Opstad said. "At this point, I have to spend all this money. But if you don't take care of you, who's going to?"

Of her years-long fight with Lyme, Opstad still remains optimistic, although she still has a long haul to reach a diagnosis of cured.

"I'm in a manageable state," Opstad said, characterizing the present-day level of her Lyme affliction. "With these aches and pains, sometimes I feel like I'm 1,000 years old ... and it's frustrating if you get into remission."

But equally frustrating is the response to Lyme-like symptoms often offered by the medical community, she noted.

"I don't think the doctors take Lyme seriously," she continued. "And what's really amazing is that there are all these people who could have Lyme disease, and not even know it."