Wild raspberries lured Jacqueline Moore over the wall of her new garden in Westchester County, New York.
She was thrilled: This was what they had left the city for.
She called the kids, and they hopped over the wall.
They picked raspberries every day for two weeks.
Then she noticed herself getting irritable.
“Every day, I would be twice as tired as I had been the day before.”
By August, arash, an irregular crimson patch, bloomed on her back.
She did not remember a bite, but she found a local doctor.
It had no effectinstead, she got worse.
She was too weak to shower alone; her mother and husband had to hold her up.
It was days before she learned what was wrong.
She did have Lyme disease, doctors told her; the rash was indeed a telltale clue.
As with Lyme, ticks transmit babesiosis.
But unlike Lyme, it can be fatal.
In 2001, only five cases were reported in the lower Hudson Valley, where Moore lives.
But the year she got sick, doctors diagnosed 120 casesa 20-fold increase.
In fact, babesiosis is one of a raft of under-the-radar tick diseases spreading across the United States.
The infection anaplasmosis nearly tripled in the same period, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever quintupled.
If the patient remembers finding a tick, or develops a rash, that’s a big clue.
If not, “it is somewhat common for these to be missed.
This lack of awareness can be deadly.
Tickborne infections cause only minor or no symptoms in some people but become dire in others.
Rocky Mountain spotted fever, for one, almost always results in hospitalization.
And among people who develop symptoms of babesiosis, 5 percent to 10 percent will die.
What’s especially troubling is that these ecological changeswhich wildlife researchers confirmaren’t natural or accidental.
To fully understand how we’ve increased our own risks, you have to know how tickborne diseases spread.
Ticks bite and draw blood only three times in their life.
In other words, the suburbs.
Even living in the city turns out not to be a protection.
“I thought it was stress.
But when she began to feel numbness and tingling in her legs, she grew scared.
They thought she had it, too.
“I have a dog,” she says she told the doctor.
“I run in Central Park.
I ride horses in the suburbs and spend time on Long Island.”
Yet science shows ticks have been hopping a ride on wildlife into new areas.
Yet patients are invariably surprised by the diagnosis.
“A lot of people are almost shocked that they could get anything from ticks,” he says.
“They remember getting tick bites growing up and never coming down with anything.”
You might wait a few days, at least, before seeing a doctor.
It would turn out Bernadette Durham had multiple tick infections.
Yet diagnosis remained elusive, even as her symptoms worsened.
“I was literally crawling on the floor from the bed to the bathroom.
I couldn’t walk my dog,” she says.
Her weight dropped to 96 pounds on her 5-foot-7-inch frame.
Later tests showed she had ehrlichiosis as well.
What if some of these patients continue to struggle because they have another tick-borne infection?
After treatment for both infections, Durham has improved, though not recovered.
She still fatigues easily, and her eyesight and attention are affected.
“I want people to know they should listen to their body and not give up.
They are not alone if they are going through this.”
But in one casebabesiosispreventing transmission is challenging.
For now, perinatal babesiosis is exceedingly rare, with only a handful of cases on record.
Luckily, the baby responded well to treatment.
Infections through blood banks are also raising concern.
Right now, donors merely complete a questionnaire that asks whether they have had babesiosis or unexplained fever.
Federal regulators are struggling with how to protect the blood supply from babesiosis.
“Until a test is available, our hands are tied,” Leiby confirms.
The California patient, already seriously ill, died within two months of having babesiosis.
Bernadette Durham and Jacqueline Moore survived.
Yet both were profoundly ill, with long recovery times.
More than two years later, Moore has regained the 15 pounds she lost and is working out again.
But she still doesn’t have the energy of her pre-illness self.
She has also never regained her uncomplicated joy in the landscape she left New York City for.
I feel I am in control of the risks now.
But it took me two years to get to this point.”
Photo Credit: David Scharf/Science Faction/Getty Images
