Through the Gates and Into All the World

by Dawn Irons, Editor

My family and I recently took a vacation to St. Louis, Missouri. My son and I are extreme history buffs! So to be in the very area where the Lewis and Clark Expedition started was quite the highlight of our vacation.

So many things stirred in my mind while on vacation. I had time to stop all my work. I did not check even one email, or answer any business calls. This was a time for rest and relaxation, time to visit with friends, and to DREAM.

It was not until I took a vacation that I realized somewhere along the way I stopped dreaming. Life has become filled with the tyranny of the urgent, and dreams have no place there. Every now and then, I feel that still small voice whisper in my ear, “Dream a BIG dream!”…And before I have time to remember what it was I used to dream about, it seems life is coming at me like a MAC truck. So this vacation was a time to tell the “tyranny of the urgent” that it was time for it to WAIT. I was on vacation!

I hit St. Louis with the intent to relax and dream again. One of the places on our vacation agenda was to visit the St. Louis Gateway Arch. Remember, my son and I are history buffs! We walked along side the Mississippi River. Did you know it really is muddy looking!??! Thoughts of Lewis and Clark filled my imagination to know that they followed this same path—the very explorers that opened up this country to a whole new life through the westward expansion of the United States. They dreamed a big dream against impossible odds.

As we headed toward the Arch to get tickets to go to the top, we had to climb a gazillion steps that would have made Rocky faint! Up until that time, I almost forgot my body is fighting borrelia spirochetes in every bone, joint and muscle of my body! In that moment I dreamed that I could have been an Olympic athlete! But alas, it was just me and my valiant fight against Lyme disease. But stubbornly I climbed those steps and desperately wished for a wheel chair at the top! With determination, and fighting through the pain, I made it to the top!

My family loaded into an egg shaped pod and rode to the top of the Gateway Arch. That is an experience I will not to soon forget. It was there, as I looked to the east and then to the west from atop this 630-foot monument where I sensed that still small voice again…only this time it said, “Dream the IMPOSSIBLE DREAM!”

As I looked eastward, I thought of how highly epidemic the region before me was with regards to Lyme disease. As I looked westward, I couldn’t help but believe that region was in just as severe of a peril of the fastest growing infectious disease in this country as the east…it’s just the information in medical textbooks of antiquity, that are still quoted today in medical schools across this country, say Lyme disease is an “east coast” disease. (Be sure and read David Kocurek’s article in this issue called Entrenched Dogma.)

I am writing this on the heels of finding out that one of the leading Lyme advocates in Texas passed away this week. You can be certain we will cover this more fully as more information is brought our way. This is a tragic and needless loss for anyone to die from this disease. When I see someone lose their life because of sub-standard medical care and insurance companies who fight treatment at every corner, it makes my blood boil.

In my opinion, the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) should be brought up on charges for crimes against humanity. Thankfully, the Attorney General of Connecticut is investigating their 2006 diagnostic and treatment guidelines for Lyme due to the potential violation of anti-trust laws by preventing any other form of treatment other than the one endorse. Do we really need to mention their financial and investment interests in the vaccine they have patented, which will benefit them financially from those very guidelines for treatment and diagnosing Lyme? No, I dare not go there….

Back to the Arch…I am beginning to feel much like historical predecessors must have felt when they looked westward from St. Louis, Missouri. I stood there at the top of the Arch with urgency, almost like a missionary being called to service on a mission field. I looked west through the Gateway Arch and knew there is a westward expansion of Lyme-literate knowledge that must make its way westward…far from the “east coast disease” myth. Unfortunately, some of those early pioneers lost their lives on the journey west…but oh, how valuable their work for the cause was to the rest of the world!

In 2007, in the USA it is just not acceptable that anyone should have to die while fighting to get thorough and extensive treatment for Chronic Lyme when the evidence-based studies show time and time again that long term antibiotic treatment in beneficial to patients who did not get cured with the 14-28 days of oral antibiotic treatment.

Just as Lewis and Clark did before me with their mission to go west, I am going to take my mission for Lyme-literate medical care through those gates and into all the world. And with the help of other faithful pioneers in this endeavor, we will see Lyme-literate knowledge and medical practice spread through out the west.

And that is how the west was won.