Posted on 05/12/2006 6:44:12 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
If diseases like AIDS and bird flu scare you, wait until you hear what's next. Doctors are trying to find out what is causing a bizarre and mysterious infection that's surfaced in South Texas.
Morgellons disease is not yet known to kill, but if you were to get it, you might wish you were dead, as the symptoms are horrible.
"These people will have like beads of sweat but it's black, black and tarry," said Ginger Savely, a nurse practioner in Austin who treats a majority of these patients.
Patients get lesions that never heal.
"Sometimes little black specks that come out of the lesions and sometimes little fibers," said Stephanie Bailey, Morgellons patient.
Patients say that's the worst symptom — strange fibers that pop out of your skin in different colors.
"He'd have attacks and fibers would come out of his hands and fingers, white, black and sometimes red. Very, very painful," said Lisa Wilson, whose son Travis had Morgellon's disease.
While all of this is going on, it feels like bugs are crawling under your skin. So far more than 100 cases of Morgellons disease have been reported in South Texas.
"It really has the makings of a horror movie in every way," Savely said.
While Savely sees this as a legitimate disease, there are many doctors who simply refuse to acknowledge it exists, because of the bizarre symptoms patients are diagnosed as delusional.
"Believe me, if I just randomly saw one of these patients in my office, I would think they were crazy too," Savely said. "But after you've heard the story of over 100 (patients) and they're all — down to the most minute detail — saying the exact same thing, that becomes quite impressive."
Travis Wilson developed Morgellons just over a year ago. He called his mother in to see a fiber coming out of a lesion.
"It looked like a piece of spaghetti was sticking out about a quarter to an eighth of an inch long and it was sticking out of his chest," Lisa Wilson said. "I tried to pull it as hard as I could out and I could not pull it out."
The Wilson's spent $14,000 after insurance last year on doctors and medicine.
"Most of them are antibiotics. He was on Tamadone for pain. Viltricide, this was an anti-parasitic. This was to try and protect his skin because of all the lesions and stuff," Lisa said.
However, nothing worked, and 23-year-old Travis could no longer take it.
"I knew he was going to kill himself, and there was nothing I could do to stop him," Lisa Wilson said.
Just two weeks ago, Travis took his life.
Stephanie Bailey developed the lesions four-and-a-half years ago.
"The lesions come up, and then these fuzzy things like spores come out," she said.
She also has the crawling sensation.
"You just want to get it out of you," Bailey said.
She has no idea what caused the disease, and nothing has worked to clear it up.
"They (doctors) told me I was just doing this to myself, that I was nuts. So basically I stopped going to doctors because I was afraid they were going to lock me up," Bailey said.
Harriett Bishop has battled Morgellons for 12 years. After a year on antibiotics, her hands have nearly cleared up. On the day, we visited her she only had one lesion and she extracted this fiber from it.
"You want to get these things out to relieve the pain, and that's why you pull and then you can see the fibers there, and the tentacles are there, and there are millions of them," Bishop said.
So far, pathologists have failed to find any infection in the fibers pulled from lesions.
"Clearly something is physically happening here," said Dr. Randy Wymore, a researcher at the Morgellons Research Foundation at Oklahoma State University's Center for Health Sciences.
Wymore examines the fibers, scabs and other samples from Morgellon's patients to try and find the disease's cause.
"These fibers don't look like common environmental fibers," he said.
The goal at OSU is to scientifically find out what is going on. Until then, patients and doctors struggle with this mysterious and bizarre infection. Thus far, the only treatment that has showed some success is an antibiotic.
"It sounds a little like a parasite, like a fungal infection, like a bacterial infection, but it never quite fits all the criteria of any known pathogen," Savely said
No one knows how Morgellans is contracted, but it does not appear to be contagious. The states with the highest number of cases are Texas, California and Florida.
The only connection found so far is that more than half of the Morgellons patients are also diagnosed with Lyme disease.
For more information on Morgellons, visit the research foundation's Web site at www.morgellons.org.
Again, a three year old is not gonna have delusional parasitosis.
And diseases are also being brought here from all over the world.
Just read on another site. The fibers are from Mars. This guy has been growing them in a petri dish. Read more at: http://www.marslife.com/glassies.htm
But his parents might.
What do you mean by "shut down the borders"?
Are you suggesting that we should close down the highways and bridges? Ban air travel to and from Mexico? What exactly do you want to do in response to a non-contagious disease?
What the hell is the matter with those idiot doctors quoted in the story? If somebody shows up in their office with a horrible skin disease, they think they're crazy? I would kick that doctor's ass and rub my lesions all over his face.
Right, just the fact that it's most prevalent in Southern Texas, California and Florida.
No evidence at all. I mean it's not like those states have the highest concentrations of illegals or anything like that right?
Feel free to return your head to the sand.
Actually it's Bush's fault first and if that don't work blame los illegales.
Its not just in South Texas. It's in California and Florida. The web site names te cities in Texas and California where the most cases are at and they are all the big cities. It could be just about anything causing it. I live near Houston. Yikes! Time to move....
Yes but I've never heard of a case of someone having dp that believed a family member had it instead of themselves. But it is a possibility. My grandmother had dp a while back. It was caused by some medication she was taking. It's really sad. They'll take lint, dirt, anything small, and tape it to paper to provide "proof" for you because you don't believe there are bugs crawling all over them.
Really? So a child cannot have psychosomatic illnesses? Mentally retarded adults cannot either? Neurodermatitis doesn't exist in children?
I'm not saying this disease/symptoms don't exist. I am skeptical of the associated hype.
You're right. The fact that this disease just spontaneously showed up in states and cities with very hi concentrations is purely coincidental.
After all it's not like illegals could have carried the stuff here and for some reason not be affected by it.
That never happens does it.
I suppose it's possible but I'm pretty sure it's mainly older adults that get dp. Reinforcement usually plays a role as they seek out others with the condition for reassurance that it's real.
>Yet we read that it's not contagious<
That's odd. According to this page on the website, http://www.morgellons.org/nurses.html , "Nurses make up the largest occupational group of all those registered with the Morgellons Research Foundation."
Now, a reasonable person would wonder why nurses, who as a profession have the most physical contact with patients, would be the most likely to contract a non-contagious disease.
There just isn't enough known about Morgellons yet.
Great work, detective.
Registering at a website means that you're infected? Where did you get your logic lessons?
Fair enough. But I'd posit that DP is more likely correlated with: overweight, unemployed, daily local TV news viewers and bat-boy National Enquirer readers (in English) than it is correlated with physically fit, illiterate Mexican illegals working concrete crews in 100F South Texas weather.
Occam's razor. If they're carrying in all manner of contagious diseases and critters that had all but been wiped out in the U.S. thereby re-introducing them to the U.S. citizenry then the most logical explanation is that they're bringing in new diseases as well.
Couple that with the clustering and all roads lead to the illegals.
The fact that the OBL doesn't want to acknowledge all the negatives associated with letting anyone and everyone wander into the U.S. and set up camp doesn't mean they don't exist and that many of us will draw the obvious correlations between the return of infectious diseases previously though eliminated and the introduction of new one's coinciding with the largest illegal mass invasion in human history.
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