Thursday, January 22, 2009

Under Our Skin

There is a new documentary out called Under Our Skin that interviews people with Lyme disease and doctors who have been trying to help them. Many of the patients were told that "nothing is wrong with you" or that they just had a psychosomatic problem. It also addresses the political and economic issues tied with Lyme. I was touched by what some of the patients said in the trailer...

What's at stake is life or death.

Maybe my death can help other people so they don't have to suffer as I suffered for so long.

I was treated and then considered cured and went on to have two more children, I then gave it to them congenitally and they have been very ill.

The sad thing is that so many of these cases could have easily been treated if they had been caught in time, or if the doctors had even acknowledged that something was wrong with them.

The documentary also has a blog with information about the documentary and general Lyme disease news. For screenings near you or information on how to buy the dvd, check the website.

3 comments:

John Latto said...

I recently watched the trailer for this documentary and it looks very interesting. Hopefully the movie has a similar tone to the trailer, which I felt came across as reasonable and skeptical but not out and out paranoid.

jnam said...

Isn't this subject on failure to diagnose a controversial one? Is it now possible to diagnose accurately in the present? From what this post says, they are saying it is a simple process to diagnose Lyme disease or at least I felt that aura from it.

John Latto said...

There is still considerable debate about whether the current test misses a lot of late stage lyme cases eg:

Critics of the test, such as Raphael B. Stricker, a past president of International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, a Bethesda, Md., group of doctors specializing in treating chronic Lyme disease, say the tests miss many patients with late-stage Lyme disease. These patients can often test negative, Dr. Stricker says.