Cody Willard’s Bout with Lyme Disease
Cody Willard, the affable charismatic FOX News Business “Happy Hour” anchor, is a financial genius. So it came as no surprise to me when Cody pointed out, in the midst of a dramatic recovery from a bout of acute Neuro-Lyme Disease, that he’d been doing a lot of reading about the topic, particularly about the enormous costs in treating a disease that is both over- and underdiagnosed.
Willard is one of the “lucky” ones. His right-sided facial droop (Bell’s Palsy) was preceeded a few weeks earlier by a hike in the woods with his dog, who had come out covered with ticks. And Willard himself, though he found no ticks on his body, developed a bright red oval rash on his leg, profound fatigue, and when he came to see me (referred by Frank Raphael and Maurice Tunick of Sirius Satellite Radio) he had a drooping mouth and difficulty closing his right eye. Lyme disease was clearly a plausible explanation for Willard’s problem.
Unfortunately, not all physicians respond the same way to this constellation of symptoms. Calling this Bell’s Palsy and ignoring the probability of Lyme or treating it quickly with oral antibiotics without performing a spinal tap is part of the undertreating and underdiagnosing of Lyme disease that Willard was referring too. Chronic Lyme can develop from a delay in diagnosis or inadequate use of antibiotics. In Willard’s case, a spinal tap revealed over a hundred white blood cells, an elevated protein, and a low glucose level, all characteristic of an acute infection. He was started on intravenous ceftriaxone right away, and by the time his Lyme titre came back overwhelmingly positive a few days later, he was already well on the road to recovery.
Watch him on “Happy Hour” this week, and you won’t even be able to detect a problem.
But not all cases of Lyme are this clearcut. The bright red rash with a lighter center (erythema migrans) occur in only two thirds of cases, and the rash can also be missed or misconstrued as due to an another insect or skin condition. Serological laboratory testing for Lyme disease is far from 100% accurate, and it is often negative in the early stages of the disease. The characteristic symptoms of headache, fatigue, and subsequent joint aches, are not specific for Lyme and are often mistaken for other problems. As Willard realized, the longer you wait for a diagnosis the more expensive both medically and financially. Chronic Lyme disease, which can include severe arthritis, heart problems, and marked cognitive difficulties, is very difficult to eradicate and expensive to treat. And fear of chronic Lyme in people who don’t really have it also creates a great health care expense.
Lyme disease, caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, is spread to humans by the bite of infected blacklegged ticks (the most common culprit, a deer tick, generally has a tiny white spot on its back). The tick has to be in the skin for over 24 hours to cause infection, and the vast majority of ticks do not carry Lyme. Still, Lyme is on the increase, with almost 20,000 cases in 2006, a national average of 8.2 cases per 100,000. Lyme is especially prevalent in 10 states.
Resources:
CDC: Learn More About Lyme Disease
Clinical practice guidelines for Lyme disease from the Infectious Disease Society of America
Marc Siegel MD is an internist and associate professor of medicine at the NYU School of Medicine. He is a Fox News Medical Contributor and writes a health column for LA Times, where he examines TV and movies for medical accuracy. Dr. Siegel is the author of False Alarm: the Truth About the Epidemic of Fear (Wiley 2005) and Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic (Wiley 2006). Read more at www.doctorsiegel.com
Tags: Bell's Palsy, Cody Willard, FOX Business Network, lyme disease, Marc Siegal, tick
Share
I was one of the first on Long Island many years ago to have it, before they knew how best to treat it. It was 6 months of horror, followed by years of re-occurances, getting less severe and fewer and far inbetween as the years went on. Its gone now, but I wonder just how much of my arthritis is familial, and how much is tied to the Lyme.
Dear Dr. Seigel,
Good for you for treating Mr. Willard so quickly and agressively. Unfortunatly, most infected people are not diagnosed quickly, if ever and many are never given proper treatment. I was scannin Fox 5 news for a story that was on a few nights ago about a sick little girl who had no diagnosis. When I saw her condition I immediately thought she may have a tick borne disease. I hope you have luck in finding out who this child is and getting her treated. People do die of tick-borne illnesses and I am afraid she could become one of them. Thank you
Dear Dr. Seigel,
Good for you for treating Mr. Willard so quickly and agressively. Unfortunatly, most infected people are not diagnosed quickly, if ever and many are never given proper treatment. I was scannin Fox 5 news for a story that was on a few nights ago about a sick little girl who had no diagnosis. When I saw her condition I immediately thought she may have a tick borne disease. Her name is Paige Bourhill and Dr Sapna did the show on her. Please hekp get this little girl checked for TBDs Thank you
Very good article.
When I was a stripling lad in South Mississippi in the mid-194O’s to earlly ’50’s, I was in the woods almost every day and regularly found “chiggers” and ticks on my body, after coming out of the woods or, the next day. If Lyme Disease had been present there, it is likely I would have died of it.
You’ve done a grave disservice by only mentioning one of the two standards of care for treatment of Lyme disease. The two standards of care are put forth by 1) ISDA (your link) and 2) ILADS.org. Your link only refers to the IDSA guidelines, which have been found to be flawed and created by members of a panel with undisclosed conflicts of interest.
On Thursday, it was announced that May 1, 2008 that Blumenthal’s antitrust investigation into the IDSA guidelines has “uncovered serious flaws in the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s (IDSA) process for writing its 2006 Lyme disease guidelines”. Blumenthal’s office reached an agreement with IDSA calling for creation of a review panel “to thoroughly scrutinize the 2006 Lyme disease guidelines and update or revise them if necessary”. More details here:
http://www.ilads.org/files/2008/Letter_to_Membership_05_09_08.pdf
More information on the ILADS.org standard of care, preferred by many: http://www.ilads.org
Thank you Dr. Seigel on the article on Cody Willard’s lyme disease.
He was mighty lucky to get to you PROMPTLY for antibiotic treatment! Cody, congrats and please pray for all of us CHRONIC LYME PATIENTS nationwide and internationally!!
I’ve had chronic lyme for 38.5 years; 34 years MISDIAGNOSED by 40-50 drs/specialists!!! UNACCEPTABLE!
Therefore, the spirochetes have multiplied galore and spread to every place in my body; mainly, my brain for cognitive skills; heart; lungs; kidneys; and SUPER sensitivities of:
all lights, glare, and reflection is like looking directly at the sun for me;
noise/sounds … sounds like a base drum, and I wear ear protection alot since it’s so painful;
chemical smells … perfume, cologne, hairspray, cigarette smoke and especially on smoker’s clothing, diesel fumes, paint, some foods, cleaning supplies and some office supplies!
By process of elimination, I determined the tick came OFF my folks’ LIVE CHRISTMAS TREE 1969! It was sub-zero Iowa weather; I didn’t garden; and I/roommates had NO pets … all the normal ways of getting bitten by a tick.
I disagree with a couple of your statements in the article:
Less than 40-50% MAX have bulls-eye rashes; I didn’t have a rash nor did I see a tick embedded on me.
Ticks can be in your skin for 3 hours and infect you; not 24 hours. We’ve had too many who fit into the 3 hours or less time sequence who have chronic lyme and who are my lyme online buddies on a message board!
I’m sure Cody was one of the lucky ones to where his health insurance PAID for his treatment, and did NOT deny him as they have the MAJORITY of us!
I fought for 18 months to be reimbursed $5,000 out of pocket expenses to go to a LLMD, LYME LITERATE MEDICAL DR., out of state since Iowa and 15-18 other states do NOT have any full-time chronic LLMDS. Plus I paid $1,000 travel expenses for lodging, gas, and food.
Iowa’s BCBS denied me payment of the $5,000 although I got all the verbal approvals before I left Iowa for my 1st visit!!
Many chronic lyme patients have lost:
their jobs, health insurance, their spouses and kids, family/friends who do NOT believe how this disease has changed us all, lost their homes, bankruptcy, and now HOMELESS !!
We’ve had 2 lyme disease bills in congress for 10 years: S 1708 and HR 741; we’ve been requesting that they be placed on congresses AGENDA IN NEAR FUTURE for around 1 year. I’ve been calling daily for 2 months now!
Thank you for your article on Cody, and mentioning that CHRONIC LYME IS RAMPANT IN ALL 50 STATES; not just 10 states!! Iowa is no. 15 in reported CDC statistics!
Bettyg, Iowa lyme activist
I hope that Cody Willard was evaluated for other tick borne diseases including anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, babesia, bartonella, rocky mountain spotted fever, and/or tularemia that may be transmitted by the same tick bite that resulted in Lyme disease.
Using CDC’s ratio of 1 in 10 cases of Lyme are identified and reported, the approximately 20,000 Lyme cases reported yearly are actually 200,000 nationwide each year making Lyme the number one vector borne disease in the USA. Here in Maine, 2007’s 529 cases translated into over 5,000 individuals infected.
When going outside in tick areas http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/lyme/ld_Incidence.htm,
apply 25% or higher DEET to your exposed skin and wear light colored clothing that has been pretreated with .5% permethrin. Keep grass cut short, get rid of leaf piles, and move play sets into sunny areas. Ticks will be in tall grass, low shrubbery, leaf piles,stone walls, wood piles, or the interface between lawn and woods. Small rodents are the vectors for the Lyme disease bacteria. When removing ticks, use fine pointed tweezers, grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible, and pull straight up slowly. It may take 1 to 2 minutes to remove the tick. If the tick has attached, consult your physician and note the date and location of the bite.
Increasing your awareness and performing a daily tick check can reduce your risk of contracting Lyme & associated diseases. Understand that there are 2 standards of care and treatment protocols – ILADS & IDSA. Educate yourself and become your own advocate.. Support Federal Bills S 1708 / HR 741 which provide Prevention, Education and Research for Lyme and associated diseases. Go to a screening of Under Our Skin, a Lyme documentary that chronicles chronic Lyme patients journies toward wellness- http://www.openeyepictures.com/underourskin/