Lyme Aware

Textbook From West Chester Writer Focuses On Lyme Disease

For Kathy Spreen, Lyme disease is a family affair. The trouble for her West Chester family started with her husband, who complained of fatigue and shoulder pain. Diagnosed with Lyme, he was treated with antibiotics and cured. About a year later, suffering with fatigue and joint pain, Spreen was treated twice for Lyme, which led to arthroscopic surgery and an eventual knee replacement. But when her 20-year old son Chris was rushed to the emergency room with a fever near 106 degrees and lapsing in and out of consciousness, she felt helpless. Despite her credentials as a physician, a tick taken from her son’s flank, and a telltale rash, she and her husband could not get the medical staff to acknowledge that he might have Lyme. A doctor eventually administered a Lyme test that came back positive and Chris was treated with the antibiotic doxycycline, but his disease flared repeatedly over the next few years, inducing crippling fatigue and interfering with his aeronautical engineering studies at Purdue University. Read More.