Chelsea M. Frazier
Tuolumne County, California

Total cost: $1,365
Number of family members with LD: 4
Lost work/school:
Number of years sick: 9 months

My third and youngest child to contract Lyme disease was my daughter, Chelsea. She was seven years old at the time of the tick bite. It occurred in March of 1996 while we were hiking a couple miles from our home located in Sonora, CA. It was in her posterior neck and wasn't discovered until it was engorged the following day. Her local physician treated her with liquid erythromycin for ten days. On May 26, 1996 she acquired yet another tick bite while visiting her Grandfather's ranch in Hollister, CA. I sent this tick in for Borrelia burgdorferi culturing but was told it was negative. It had been over 2.5 months since the first bite and it was at this time that she began experiencing symptoms. They occurred despite the short course of antibiotics she had. She developed chest pains, stomach aches, and felt poorly. Her physician felt she probably had an allergy to milk and had me remove it from her diet and observe her. I did this for several weeks and continued to watch her suffer from the stomach aches and chest pains. She was also beginning to lose her reading and math skills and becoming forgetful. She returned to her doctor in late August and I requested she have an ELISA, and Western blot both IGG and IGM. Her physician knew our family history which included three other members with it. He still felt it was highly unlikely that she had it too. The first tests were performed a little over five months after the initial exposure and proved to be equivocal. Her serology was 1.15 and her Western blots both showed suspicious reactivity to 39. 41. and 93 kDa proteins. Her physician elected to wait four to six weeks and then retest her. These second two Western blots both IGG and IGM now met all the criteria required by Centers of Disease Control. She has two of the three required bands on her IGM and five of ten required on her IGG. There is a small window of opportunity to catch such a striking lab profile as this. Now nearly seven months into the disease she could finally begin treatment. She took a six month course of Biaxin during which time I spent months fighting my insurance for coverage. They said, "Our review of current literature, Rahn et al., (Annal of Internal Medicine 1991:114:472), and Tierney et al.: Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment 1997 edition does not support the efficacy of using antibiotics beyond 30 days for the treatment of Lyme disease". In order for them to approve the continuation of antibiotics I had to do extensive research and send them copies of peer-reviewed studies which documented improved outcome with chronic (i.e. >30 days) Biaxin. I did this which I shouldn't have had to! I knew that it had already been proven, why should I have to show them this proof? It's their responsibility to know the facts, not just pretend to with a lot of academic lingo.

The outcome of Chelsea's story is a good one, but only because I knew the disease parameters and how they can manifest. I knew from the first presenting symptom of chest pains (70% of children with Lyme disease have chest pains) that she very likely had contracted Lyme disease. But months went by and a lot of expense had to be incurred prior to treating her. She has been off the antibiotics now for seven months and has remained symptom free.