Faculty member’s family copes with Lyme disease

Lyme disease is not a rare disorder. The cause of Lyme disease is a bacteria called spirochete and is generally transmitted by ticks. While certain geographic locations are more susceptible to Lyme disease outbreaks, a case is present on the college campus, as is the situation of Kim Jerabek, assistant, Financial Aid and her immediate family.

Jerabek, her husband and two children all suffer from Lyme disease. (Lyme) Jerabek believes her family may have contracted the disease during a soccer tournament in Minnesota several years ago. Like most details about this virus, she can’t be sure. Each family member bears a varying degree of difficulty.

Jerabek’s husband Scott has the mildest case of the family members affected, while her daughter Chelsea continues to endure numerous complications. Chelsea began showing symptoms of the illness when she was 12 years old. Her first indication of the disease was joint pain but because Chelsea didn’t develop the most common symptom, a bull’s eye rash, she was not correctly diagnosed until age 15.

According to kidshealth.org, the rash is considered typical of Lyme disease, but many patients never develop it. “They’re the lucky ones, because they can be treated in six-to-eight weeks with antibiotics,” Kim said. When Chelsea was 16, the virus depleted her central nervous system, causing chronic pain and seizures.

“The disease is debilitating and crippling,”
Kim said. Lyme does not go away in time. Instead, it spreads rapidly until it has engulfed its carrier. Unfortunately, every part of the body infected with Lyme requires a different antibiotic, which explains why the disease is so hard to treat.

Soon thereafter, Chelsea lost her ability to walk. She missed nearly her entire senior year of high school. Although her long-term memory was not affected, she lost all her short-term memory. Calculus and chemistry use to be “like two plus two” to her, now they are like a foreign language, said Kim. Chelsea’s sickness included numerous hospital stays, IV medications and emergency room visits.

At one point, Chelsea was taking up to 90 pills a day. One of the reasons that Lyme disease continues to remain so mysterious is because of the widespread variety of symptoms. From joint pain to seizures, the signs of the ailment are difficult to recognize. Consequently, doctors have wrongly diagnosed Lyme disease as arthritis
and fibromyalgia.

“They call it the great imitator,” Kim said. “In my personal opinion, there is no such thing as a Lyme expert.” Chelsea was initially diagnosed incorrectly, a reason why Kim recommends alternative testing.

“People should not rely on the Center for Disease Control (CDC) test,” Kim said. “The only lab in the nation that does accurate Lyme testing is called IGeneX, in California.” But the story does end happily. Chelsea currently tests Lyme free and is playing soccer on scholarship at Rockhurst University. Chelsea recently began a new outdoor job on a challenge course, a possibly risky move since there’s no way to be sure she won’t contract the disease again.

“I don’t have fear in my vocabulary, but my stomach did clench,” Kim said. Jerabek urges everyone to take necessary precautions, like wearing bug spray, instead of battling the debilitating disease she experienced firsthand.