Campaign to raise disease awareness

A FORSTON woman is fighting to raise awareness of a disease that has taken her more than a decade to recover from.

Gill Reese, aged 60, wants doctors to have better training so they can recognise the debilitating illness Lyme Disease, which can often be wrongly identified as ME or meningitis.

The mother-of two went into hospital in 1997 with suspected meningitis and spent a week there having tests. Her symptoms got worse but tests showed she did not have meningitis. She was sent home but was frightened that she was going to die.

She said: "From being a busy mother-of-two and working as a medical biologist, one day my world came crashing down. I could barely breathe and my heartbeat was going wild. My limbs were jerking, I could not sleep and felt sick all the time.

"I had to write off work at the age of 49. I was bedridden."

Her parents sent her a newspaper article about Lyme Disease and she realised her symptoms matched. She checked her diary to work out how she could have contracted the disease and traced it down to when she was picking ticks off her dog in September 1997, when she was living in Yorkshire. The disease can be spread through tick bites.

She started feeling ill six weeks later but her doctor had not looked into the condition, as there is a belief the disease occurs mainly in the New Forest and the South Downs.

Mrs Reese said: "It can be picked up anywhere and carried by vermin, birds, and pets, and can be picked up in the garden. I found out it had to be treated quickly and fought to get my doctor to diagnose me."

She began a course of antibiotics in the November and her condition began to improve. Her children taught her to use the Internet and she discovered she was not being given the right dosage of medication for the correct time.

She said: "Doctors who not like people self-diagnosing themselves, but when your life comes crashing down you should be taken more seriously. It is the disease from hell and I was told it was in my head.

"In a year, I knew quite a lot about it and got better treatment. I was so grateful to have read the newspaper article which saved my life, and I wanted to get the word out there to help others."

She set up her own website support group called EuroLyme, to help fellow sufferers and campaign for a change in medical training. She moved to West Dorset two years ago and is working with MP Oliver Letwin to raise awareness.

She said: "The problem is that doctors are not trained to recognise the symptoms of the disease. Ticks are microscopic and the majority of people with unexplained symptoms do not realise they have been bitten.

"It has taken me years to recover as it is a very slow treatment. There can be a good outcome if people are treated quickly and early by having high-dosage antibiotics, but some patients are told the disease does not exist. The blood tests are unreliable too; I had three which came back negative."

For more details, visit the websites www.lymediseaseaction.org.uk or www.health. groups.yahoo.com/group/eurolyme