Lyme disease has take non our health
Some doctors told me Lyme doesn’t exist in Northern Ireland. Others agree it is here
Fitness instructor Nichola McMillen (39) lives in Bangor with her 10-year-old daughter. She was bitten by a tick in Donegal four years ago and developed Lyme disease.
“I used to do a lot of mountaineering,” she says. “I was out climbing hills in the west Donegal area and I noticed a big bullseye bite rash on my thigh one day and thought that I had taken a really bad reaction to a bug bite.
“I noticed another one and they got worse and worse over a couple of days. I started to feel a bit off, and a bit sick, however I didn’t put it down to anything and came home and carried on with life.
“But I started to get more tired and have more ailments. It was only months later that a friend of mine was reading in a mountaineering magazine about Lyme disease and it had a photograph of exactly the same bullseye rash that I had. It said that Lyme was now sweeping Donegal.
“I was so worried that I went to my GP surgery and said I hadn’t been feeling well since being bitten and having the rash. But a doctor told me that since they hadn’t seen this rash with their own eyes, then there was nothing really they could do (Nichola’s rash had faded by the time she visited her doctor).
“That was four years ago and since that time I have just got sicker with lots of different things going on. I was so fit and healthy before and now I am really sluggish from head to toe. There is something that I am being investigated for but
they can’t really find out what is going wrong.”
Nichola says that she is frustrated by the fact that animals are well treated for Lyme and humans don’t seem to be.
“The doctors here seem to vary greatly on their opinion of Lyme disease and their belief on how prevalent it is or isn’t,” she says. “Some doctors have told me that Lyme doesn’t exist in Northern Ireland. Others have said that they 100% agree that it is here, but that their hands are tied with regards NHS guidelines.
“So many people have contracted Lyme disease but haven’t had it diagnosed at the time and years later it is in their tissue, their heart muscles, their brain and it’s just that hidden illness that is eating away at things.
“But to get treatment for that seems to be nearly impossible. I know a lot of people who are paying thousands of pounds to go to America and Germany to get long-term IV-antibiotics and herbal treatments privately.
“I looked at those options and I couldn’t justify spending the money on something that might or might not make me feel better. What sickens me the most is that our animals are treated for Lyme disease here if they get a tick bite. Humans don’t seem to get that.”
Nichola says she still lives with the effects of Lyme disease four years on.
“I am living with this now,” she explains. “The fatigue is unreal. Even when you have had a full night’s sleep you are just so, deeply exhausted. I have confusion, it’s like a brain fog. There are aches and pains, and inflammation of the joints. There are heart arrhythmias and skipped beats and dizziness and lots of things that you cannot really put your finger on necessarily and the doctors can’t give you one diagnosis for what is causing all of it.
“Lyme has left me a different person,” she adds. “I know I am very lucky compared to a lot of others I know who are literally bed-bound with it. I know a couple of girls who are in wheelchairs because they are so debilitated with it.”
‘I was bitten by a tick four years ago and I still have aches and pains, heart arrhythmias and dizziness’