In early 2007, my wife decided she wanted to run a marathon. That's who she was: jump in head first. I was an experienced runner so I convinced her to at least go for a half marathon first; if she liked it, then we try a full marathon. She went for that and we decided on the Rock & Roll Half Marathon in Virginia Beach on Labor Day weekend. We spent a lot of time outside that summer, in particular, at Otsiningo Park. Race day came and we finished the half marathon. Our times weren't great, but we just wanted to finish.

In late 2007/early 2008 Terrie started having physical problems. She was going to the gym and working with a personal trainer, and the trainer said she couldn't have her as a client because she was so short of breath. It literally came out of nowhere. She was having tremors in her extremities also, along with some mental fogginess at times.

It was June of 2008 when I first took her to the ER because of the tremors. They were becoming more frequent and violent. Of course, by the time she actually saw a doctor the episode was over. They wrote it off as stress or something, but we knew something was very wrong. We had a good primary care doctor who was sympathetic, but he couldn't get a handle on it either. So we looked around for the next couple of years, at one point she was even diagnosed with MS, but most people had no answers. We tried traditional medicine, some new age stuff, etc. We had to file bankruptcy in 2010 because of the bills (even with BC/BS insurance).

Over the next 10 years or so Terrie would improve somewhat, and then slide back again. Around 2015 we thought we found the answer - they discovered one of her carotid arteries was 80% blocked. They did surgery, she was out of the hospital about three days later. On the way home she wanted to stop at Wegmans, which we did, and she walked around for about an hour. We thought "finally an answer", but it wasn't meant to be.

About a month later her symptoms came right back.

Among the many, many things she had been tested for was Lyme disease. The test was negative, but it was probably a false negative. Her doctor at this time was even a Lyme disease specialist, but no one looked into it any further, and we had no reason to push the issue. Her mobility was slowly decreasing; she used a cane and then a walker most of the time. Then we had to get a wheelchair as her shortness of breath was still a major problem. In January 2021 she caught Covid. She was in the hospital for four days with it; they only let her out because they needed the beds. She was on oxygen for the next few months and all the physical problems got even worse. However, our doctor's office arranged to make house calls for her, and the doctor they sent seemed pretty sharp and very compassionate, so we changed to him. I believe it was August of 2021 when they ordered a blood test of some sort, and it came back saying she had all the markers for having had Lyme disease sometime in past 30 years. We both thought about the half marathon training and all that time in the woods. 

They put her on a high dose of steroids and she improved quite a bit over the next few months. Unfortunately she had also developed an auto-immune disorder, and when caught a minor cold (not Covid) a couple months later it knocked her back to square one. Over the past three years her mobility declined even further; it was difficult for her to get back forth to the bathroom in our small house. About eight months ago she started showing signs of dementia, and her kidneys were starting to fail. She had a UTI earlier this year and that seemed to really bring on the dementia (not uncommon I'm told). The dementia made her paranoid so she didn't want to take her meds because she thought they were contaminated or poisoned; that spread to her food so she largely stopped eating. She passed peacefully on May 31, 2025. I miss her so much...

Lyme disease is a very serious problem, especially in this part of the country. I love hiking in the woods with my dog, but I'm much more alert for ticks now. I know several people whose lives have turned upside down by this disease. The good news is if caught early it's very treatable (my 80 year old aunt. ended up in the hospital with it last year, they diagnosed it and she’s back to normal). The mission of LymeCARES is to provide the medical community with the tools they need to diagnose Lyme correctly. Something that is sorely needed. If Terrie had been diagnosed she would probably be here today. Please, consider a donation to this cause.