Getting diagnosed in time and then getting the right treatment is a lottery

– Lyme disease victim Janey Cringean

Janey Cringean,

58, from Livingston, has spent the last 15 years battling Lyme disease after being bitten while visiting Beecraigs country park in Bathgate as she was playing hide and seek with her niece and nephew.

The IT consultant was left paralysed from her knee to her left foot, and she has been campaigning for better treatment and research ever since. Janey said: “You don’t feel the bite because the tick injects anaesthetic into the wound. Then you only have a short eightweek opportunity to get treatment before you run the risk of infection affecting you long term. “Only half of those bitten will develop a tell-tale rash. It can then be a lottery whether you get to a doctor in time, and whether they are aware enough of the possible life-long effects of Lyme’s so you get the right treatment.

“I did develop the rash and developed dreadful flu-like symptoms. I then progressed to having such awful pains

I was told I had endometriosis and the migraines which came were unimaginably painful.

“I’ve been left having to constantly take several antibiotics, and accessing private treatment because the NHS response was just not robust enough and any attempt to stop taking medication left me with dreadful relapses.”

Janey says one NHS infectious diseases expert “literally wrote me off”.

She said: “He said there was no doubt I had Lyme’s, but he discharged me from the service because he said there was nothing more that could be done for me.”

She said the disease had life-changing consequences for her. “I was eventually told that if I hadn’t been able to access private testing, the NHS would most likely have ended up giving me a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

“I’m in touch withh others who’ve beeen misdiagnosed with that and other illneesses such as fibromyalgia when in fact they aare suffering tick-bornee infections.”