The punch Lyme Disease packed left kathy Hubbard fighting for her will to live - a battle she is still struggling to win.

Lyme disease is transmitted by the smallest of creatures: the Ixodes scapularis, or deer tick, is about the size of a poppy seed. But its saliva can carry the Lyme bacterium and a cocktail of other infectious agents responsible for the largest family of insect-borne diseases in the U.S.

Kathy and David Hubbard and their five childre have fought them all.

David discussed his treatment regimen while injecting a serious of four large syringes into a line stitched into his arm - as he does three times a day, pumping antibiotics directly into his heart.

He grew quiet when asked about the threat to his children. "It's like being in a dark tunnel and not being sure when and if you're going to see the light at the end. Our feeling was "You can mess with us, but leave our kids alone." But there was nothing we could do about this."

Kathy first noticed a bull's-eye rash on her skin in the early spring of 2002. They had moved from Phoenix shortly before, and she knew enough about Lyme to go to a local clinic. The doctor dismissed her fears.

"He said it definitely looked like a Lyme disease rash," she said. "When he asked if I had any joint pains or flu-like symptoms, I said no. He told me I was one of the lucky ones and sent me home."

Their son Thomas, 15, was infected later that summer but they never noticed a rash. In November he started complaining of "arm sprains" and would go to bed after any exertion - even taking out the trash.
The day before Thanksgiving, they took him to the emergency room. His left knee was swollen like a balloon and he was fighting a high fever.

David was at work as a satellite systems developer when the doctor's call came. He still remembers the doctor who recommended surgery.
"I told Kathy to tell the doctor, "Thanks for the opinion. I'll get another opinion and get back to you," he said. He took the cell phone from Kathy and the doctor said "Mr. Hubbard, I was going to go home and stuff my turkey, but I'm going to operate on your son. And if we wait 24 hours, we won't need to have this discussion."

For ten days, Tom was hospitalized and given IV antibiotics. The tests came back positive for Lyme disease.

Their eldest daughter, Elaine, 15, still struggles to get up and go to school.

"I can sleep all night and I can get up and I'm still tired. I can sleep all day. I get sick a lot. I almost constantly have a headache," Elaine said.
She also has a hard time falling asleep at night due to joint and muscle pains.

Kathy eventually went back to the doctor, beginning an odyssey of appointments, misdiagnoses, tests, false negatives, apparent cures and relapses that continue today.

"I just kept getting worse," she said. "Every day I developed a new symptom it seems."

In 2003, David began showing symptoms. Bad news had come to stay.

The following year, their doctor threw in the towel and referred them to a Long Island doctor who specialized in treating late-stage Lyme and related tick-borne diseases - babesiosis, bartonella and ehrlichiosis.

After another child became symptomatic, the Hubbards had all their children tested.

"It was definitely a shock," David said. All their children had contracted some combination of bacteria from ticks. When it came time for David to look for a new job in 2003, they headed to Charlottesville, VA, where deer ticks are less common. Though they enjoyed living in Gaithersburg, David said the family will not move back to Maryland, which has the nation's third highest prevalence of Lyme infections. The risks, he said, are too high.

"Our son Thomas, who was only diagnosed with Lyme - none of the co-infections - never had any relapse," Kathy said. All seven members of her family caught some combination of the bacteria borne by deer ticks from the woods surrounding their suburban home.

Though Tom recovered after several weeks of IV antibiotics, the rest of his family has fought for months or even years since the first symptoms showed up in 2002. Most of them were initially misdiagnosed, allowing the diseases to gain a strong foothold. That should not have happened in Maryland, doctors who specialize in the disease say.

"Doctors in Maryland should be fully aware of it," said Dr. Michael Zimring, fo Baltimore's Merby Medical Center. "Any internist or family practitioner should know what Lyme Disease is."

Left untreated, the bacteria can get into the blood and attack the brain, heart and joints. In secondary Lyme infections, symptoms resembling arthritis, flu and even deadly spine and brain infections like meningitis.

Lyme does not play fair. "You have to gather evidence to identify it," said Dr. William Petri, head of the University of Virginia Medical Center's infectious disease lab. Doctors cannot develop a culture as with other bacterial illnesses.

Excerpted from Washington Examiner News by Karl B. Hillie