Issues → July/August 2007 → Feature Stories →
Lyme Disease: One Woman's Journey
(page 6 of 8)
I knew what Rita meant by the "strange energy" surrounding Lyme. When I visited Georgina Scholl and asked her to explain the controversy, she covered my tape recorder with her hand and whispered, "Please!" And then she said, as if in mediation, "Why do we have to have this disagreement? Let's just get rid of Lyme!" Kirby Stafford and Peter Rand both told me they wouldn't answer questions about the "biopolitical" aspect of Lyme. What did they mean by that? I wondered. What was there about this disease that could not be discussed?
And then I met Marjorie Tietjen, a sweet-natured woman who lives with her husband and son in a house in the woods of Killingworth, Connecticut. Marjorie, who has suffered from Lyme since 1989, calls herself a Lyme activist. I'd read her articles on the Web and was impressed by her wealth of information. She welcomed me to her home. Like almost every other Lyme patient I'd visited, she had stacks of papers and folders piled on the dining room table.
Marjorie had her own story to tell me, but she also had a book she wanted to give me: Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory by Michael Christopher Carroll (HarperCollins, 2004).
Carroll discovered that Plum Island, which sits in eastern Long Island Sound, was set up after World War II with the help of Erich Traub, a German germ warfare expert. During the war, Traub had operated a lab on an island in the Baltic Sea. Islands, it was thought, were ideal for such research, as they're self-limiting. But we know now that that's an illusion. As Carroll points out: "Plum Island lies in the middle of the Atlantic flyway, the bird migration highway that runs between breeding grounds and winter homes from the Caribbean to the Florida coast, up the East Coast to the icy reaches of Greenland. In addition, deer swim back and forth between the island and the mainland."
Compiling information received through the Freedom of Information Act, Carroll details Plum Island's shadowy netherworld: virus outbreaks, biological meltdowns, infected workers, contaminated raw waste flushed into the Sound ... and experimental tick colonies, bred for research on vector-borne diseases.
As the big white ferry New London pushes forward into deep water, steel-gray clouds hide the sky. The trip to Long Island takes about an hour and a half, and midway through our journey, on the port side, Plum Island appears, crowned with a water tower and edged with large, flat-roofed buildings. Off the island's shores, fishing boats and pleasure craft bob. At its tip, a picturesque granite-based lighthouse sits, like a photo on a postcard.
On the map, Plum Island lies like an arrow, one end pointing toward the Connecticut coast and other toward Long Island's North Fork. At the same time that Polly Murray and many others in that area were beginning to experience bizarre symptoms, Plum Island's germ research was up and running. Birds, stopping on Plum Island, often flew next to either Montauk (on the South Fork) or Lyme, where the rich estuaries of the terminus of the Connecticut River lured them. Initially, the highest incidences of the disease were in Lyme and surrounding towns, and at the tip of Long Island.
Lab 257 has been shut down, but other labs on the island perk along. If infected ticks did escape from this island, they've long since done the damage and nothing can stop them now; Borrelia burgdorferi is out and about, doing its job, making people sick.
Reader Comments
Comment from Donna Zuk on June 6, 2008
I have Yankee magazine emailed to me every month, but in June last year I moved back to Connecticut after spending 2 years in North Carolina near my grandchildren and missed this article until now. I have been having weird ripping pains in my hands that heal in about 4 days only to return. I could hardly hold a pen today with sharp pains shooting in my hand whenever I tried to do normal activities. After a year of this, and it not getting better today after my usual 4 days or so of healing, I decided to go to the walk-in. I have lab work that I have to get done, and I noticed a Lymes disease test.
Funny thing I thought. Many years ago (16) a doctor tested me for hypothyroidism, Lymes, and Epstein Barr/mono. The Lymes and thyroid tests were negative. The Epstein Barr titer test was positive. I was diagnosed with Chronic Epstein Barr.
Years later after getting a tetanus shot, weird things began happening. Pain, severe pain, muscle spasms and muscle jerks spread all over my body, then 2 months later burning, boiling pain. Tender pain I used to call "it feels like raw hamburg pain." Then if I did some sit ups, I would have serious tender pain between my muscles and rib bones. I'd say, it feels like someone hit me with a baseball bat multiple times. My exhaustion for years continued. I would wish for death. I would cry from the pain and exhaustion. I didn't want to be in a relationship so they wouldn't have to deal with my limited life.
After seeing multiple doctors, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I always feel sick. I have a hard time getting up in the morning and a hard time falling asleep, or staying asleep. I always hurt.
I came home tonight with thoughts of the meaning of my painful hand symptoms and what they might have to do with Lymes disease? I began my internet search again. Again I was reminded of another search I had done, and the tell-tale sign of the bulls eye rash. It's a funny thing because I had that once... (27 years ago) more than one on the same leg, so I counted it out. It was more than one area so it can't be Lymes. The Lymes test was negative, and there was also more than one bulls eye area at the same time (and it didn't get better). Then I read on the net, you can have more than one even if there's only one bite.
Ok, so now I continue searching trying to find any type of bite that might have the look of my bulls eye. My bulls eye was not the red rash. I distinctly remembered mine were bruises. You can imagine after all these years of never mentioning it to a doctor. I am now a nurse, (and after 19 years of nursing at 50 years old going back to college because my repetitive 'injuries' and exhaustion is making life miserable if not impossible at times) I was not a nurse when I had these bulls eyes but niether was I taught about lymes disease in nursing... never mind atypical BRUISE-type bulls eyes! Thank you so much for this article, and please, please thank that nurse!
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