Aug. 17--Erika Harding missed much of her senior year of high school, her senior prom and a full year of the ballet and tap that she loved to a disease that no doctor would diagnose: Lyme disease.
A year filled with doctor after doctor and test after test had led her nowhere. She had mononucleosis or strep throat, they said. Or no, maybe it's a raging sinus infection. Even the esteemed Mayo Clinic told her she just had fibromyalgia and depression. A neurologist told her she was "disgustingly healthy."
"It's like saying I'm making it up," said the 19-year-old college sophomore. "One of the hard things about Lyme disease is you're not always visibly sick, but you feel really bad and nobody's really believing you."
It all began with a tick bite she got one Saturday in May 2006 during her job as a lifeguard. She and her family thought the bite came from a spider. But doctors at the urgent care said it didn't look anything like a spider bite. Her knee was hugely swollen and red.
"It wasn't the classic bull's-eye rash," Harding said. A bull's-eye rash is one sign of early infection with the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria, which is the predominant
cause of Lyme disease in the U.S.
She took some antibiotics and spent the rest of the summer relatively healthy. Then the last day of August, right after first hour in her senior year at high school, Harding felt terribly sick.
"This is August and I'm wearing a hoodie and shivering," she said. Her temperature climbed to 104 degrees. She was sick a week, then went back to school. But things were never normal again.
Harding was plagued with high fevers, terrible headaches, body aches and crippling fatigue the rest of her senior year. She rarely made it through an entire day at school, but she still was able to earn the credits needed to graduate.
She saw every specialist imaginable. And then she saw them all again at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. By this time, Harding's mother, Kathy, sensed it was Lyme disease because of research on the Internet.
Instead of going off to college like she had dreamed, Harding missed a scholarship opportunity and went to Tulsa Community College her first year to be near home.
A friend, Kathleen Workman, who herself has advanced Lyme disease, told Kathy to take her daughter to her own doctor in Missouri.
It was there, in Springfield, that Harding was diagnosed. After a year of Lyme treatments, Erika is feeling much better. She has headed off to Oklahoma State University to experience her first year of college away from home and she is taking a tennis class to test her stamina.
"I'm lucky that I got better," she said.
A different path
Workman was assistant superintendent of Union Public Schools when she fell ill. Like Harding, she saw multiple doctors and received a variety of diagnoses. A neurologist thought she had multiple sclerosis.
"I walked like MS and looked like MS, but it wasn't," she said. He became skeptical when MS testing came back negative.
As an educator, Workman's nature is to research. When she found out about the symptoms of Lyme disease, she was stunned. It all rang true.
"If he had begun treating me for MS, I could have died," she said.
Workman's family practice physician conducted a screening test recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But it came back negative.
"That test misses so many," she said. Instead, Workman found a leading expert on the disease in New York City, scheduled an appointment and got the Western blot test. It was positive.
"I had been sick at least eight years. By the time I was diagnosed, I was already in late-stage Lyme disease," Workman said. The disease has progressed to her brain. She can no longer walk without assistance and requires home health care.
On top of that, she was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Unfortunately, the Lyme disease fuels the progression of her Parkinson's, she said.
"It's a constant struggle. You have to be really strong," Workman said. "I have brain damage, so I don't make good sense sometimes."
She retired from Union Public Schools due to disability in 2005.
"I can no longer do the career that I loved. I've lost that identity. There are constant losses," Workman said.
Her mission now is to educate others about Lyme disease and to help them, like she did Erika.
"I focus not on how many days I have left, but on what to do with those days," Workman said. "My question is: How can I help people now that the door to my career has closed? I have to find another door."
Without a supportive group of friends and her family, she said her life wouldn't be nearly as full and happy. And she sometimes thinks of how difficult it must be for her husband, Steve, to whom she's been married for 32 years.
"He's my best friend. I don't know what I would do without him, my son and my daughter," Workman said. "In that way, I'm the luckiest person in the world."
A tick-borne disease
Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted to humans by the bite of infected deer ticks. Typical symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue and a characteristic bull's-eye skin rash called erythema migrans. If left untreated, infection can spread to joints, the heart and the nervous system. Lyme disease is diagnosed based on symptoms, physical findings and the possibility of exposure to infected ticks; laboratory testing is helpful in the later stages of disease. Most cases of Lyme disease can be treated successfully with a few weeks of antibiotics. Steps to prevent Lyme disease include using insect repellent, removing ticks promptly, landscaping and integrated pest management. The ticks that transmit Lyme disease can occasionally transmit other tick-borne diseases as well.
Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Kim Archer 581-8315
kim.archer@tulsaworld.com
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