Really? Is This What It's Come To?
by Dawn Irons
I remember vividly the day the story broke about Travis the chimp going on a rampage and beating a woman nearly to death. I was on the phone with a friend and she mentioned that the chimp must have had a bad day. I said, “No, he probably had a ‘Lyme rage’ moment!”... and no sooner had the words crossed my lips the newscaster had said that Travis had been recently diagnosed and was currently being treated for Lyme disease.
There was silence on both sides of the phone. My friend asked me how I knew that. I told her that I was attempting to make a joke and lighten the tenseness of the conversation. She was even more intrigued, and I was no longer laughing. The fact that the chimp truly did have Lyme disease, and was shot down and killed in order to protect the woman who had been so brutally attacked, just rattled me to the core.
I remember when I began treatment, and shortly before I was diagnosed, that my anger levels seemed to be on a constant roller coaster ride. I secretly wondered at times if I could have been bi-polar. There were times that I could be in a wonderful mood and then suddenly, without notice, find myself ready to rip someone’s head off!
This concerned me greatly and I began to pay closer attention to when these anger episodes would flare. Within a few weeks I started to notice a pattern. There was usually some loud noise that would preceded the sudden mood shift. There were often times sudden noises would pervade my environment. Sometimes it was my children and the neighborhood kids playing video games in the livingroom, and their volumn levels just steadily escalated to a point that it caused me unbearable, physical pain and I would uncharacteristically just explode in anger, yelling at people to be quiet and leave the house. I would quickly retreat to my bedroom with horrendous migraines. This happened fairly often.
Other times, it was a dish falling from the cabinet and crashing to the floor. Still other times it was the family dog barking incessantly. Sometimes it was sound feedback on microphones or speakers at church. I also noticed mood shifts and temperament changes in very bright environments. Sunlight could be excruciating. Stage lights were more than I could handle. I found myself sitting in dark rooms with the blinds closed just working on my computer. I could not handle any background noise. No television or radio in the background was possible, the sounds just became too painful and I seemed to stay in a constantly agitated state. There were times when even the light coming off the computer screen was excruciating.
Once I was diagnosed, the doctor assured me that things would get much worse before they got better...I just went home and cried.
There is just no explaining the mood swings to children. They don’t understand. I have three children who suddenly found themselves without a functioning mom. When treatment started, so did the herxheimer reactions. There were weeks, and sometimes months, that I slept around the clock. At my worst state, there was a time from 2001 to 2006 that I barely have memories of at all-- other than excruciating pain, multiple miscarriages, multiple hospital visits and the feeling that my children were slipping further and further away from me and there wasn’t a thing I could do to change the problem. There were times I was convinced my children hated me. I struggled with knowing that my anger flare-ups truly scared them. They scared me too.
About a year into treatment I finally began to see the light at the end of the tunnel... and it wasn’t painful anymore!
Who knew that just one news story could take me back to such a dark place in my life?
I was flooded with many emotions as the story continued to make headlines and talk radio. It frustrated me to hear doctors say that Lyme disease could not do that to the chimp. Of course, these are the same doctors who tell you Lyme is cured with 28 days of antibiotics too. I guess it really came as no
surprise.
What I found interesting though, is that Lyme disease was in the news daily for over a week and it pervaded TV talk shows, talk radio-- everyone was talking about Lyme disease!
I thought it was rather ironic, but suddenly we had a poster child-chimp for the Lyme disease cause. With the vast numbers of celebrities that have been diagnosed with Lyme, we now have a chimpanzee for our spokesperson and the media are flocking to the story like white-on-rice.
Kris Newby, one of the producers for the recently released Lyme documentary commented, “It's a sad state of affairs that we have a disease with so much stigma attached that our star celebrity is a chimp with 'roid rage’. During the making of our documentary, UNDER OUR SKIN, Amy Tan was the only celebrity who would go on camera about this devastating disease.”
I would never have wished this kind of attack on anyone, nor the kind of death Travis faced on any animal. But there has been some good come of the story already. Lyme disease is front and center on almost every news media person’s mind since Travis, in his Lyme-induced rage, seems to have lost his mind and went on the attack.
