Chronic Lyme disease hobbles Spanish Fork woman

SPANISH FORK — There's a price to pay when Shanon Ballard goes Christmas shopping, and it's much steeper than the exchange at the cash register.

Body tremors, slurred speech and exhaustion so severe she often spends most of the following day in bed are part of what she endures after a two-hour shopping experience. Unable to drive, she is always escorted on these increasingly rare excursions.

Pain is her constant companion.

Lyme disease — contracted from the bite of a tick no larger than a sesame seed — has ravaged her body for 15 years, Ballard said. But without the political clout of heart disease or HIV or breast cancer, people afflicted with what they believe is a chronic form of Lyme disease have no unified voice.

So when doctors tell them it's "all in your head" or insurance companies refuse to pay for long-term antibiotic treatment, Ballard and those like her either suffer in increasing pain and silence, or they seek out the few doctors willing to treat their condition.

For all her searching, Ballard couldn't find one along the Wasatch Front.

"I saw 10 to 15 different doctors," she said. "Their main diagnosis was, 'You're depressed.' They gave me Prozac and sent me on my way."

The symptoms of her illness have caused great distress that would be "depressing to anyone," said her sister-in-law, Ginny Johnson, noting Ballard had been previously diagnosed with both Crohn's disease and Parkinson's disease.

But both she and her family knew it wasn't simply a case of chronic depression.

As a registered nurse, Ballard had knowledge of and access to medical journals that allowed her to research her own condition. Following her diagnosis, she was treated for several weeks with antibiotics, which initially helped her improve.

"But I went downhill really fast after coming off it," she said.

Ballard tried short-term antibiotics again and contracted shingles last summer, which only intensified her pain and led to other, secondary complications.

As she continued seeking treatment and told several doctors of her symptoms and diagnosis, they said her case was too complex for them.

Ballard's loss of function has come in stages. It began with pain in her late teen years, followed by debilitating fatigue, digestive problems and, most recently, increasing loss of short-term memory.

In September, after her extended family members returned from a trip to Brazil, Ballard's condition had deteriorated even more.

"I think she scared everyone," Johnson said. "We hadn't seen the tremors before."

Earlier this year, as Ballard was researching Lyme disease, she came across a documentary film, "Under Our Skin: There's No Medicine for Someone Like You," which details the stories of several people whom specialists have diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease.