Amy's Lyme Disease Story
What do the Revolutionary War and Lyme Disease have to do with each other? Nothing. Except that writer/director Amy Tiehel has Lyme Disease and thought her creative life as she knew it was over. She was misdiagnosed originally with Lupus, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Depression, and was put on multiple medications for those illnesses. Not only did she not get better, she got sicker.
Two years and twenty doctors later, Amy was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease, Babesiosis, and Adrenal Fatigue. It wasn't until the underlying bacterial infections were addressed that she started to see improvement. But it was not without a fight. Along the way, while healing from Lyme disease, Amy underwent a breast lumpectomy and was found to have two small lumps. One was benign and the other was cancer. The last seven years have been physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially challenging, but Amy fought hard against her illnesses and won.
Redcoats is her first foray back into the creative ring. While doing Redcoats she also wants to continue to shed light on Lyme disease. She is now a local Lyme support group leader for Delaware County, PA (PA Lyme, Delco Region) and is the Program Manager for PA Lyme Resource Network's "Dare 2B Tick Aware" program, found at www.palyme.org.
Lyme Disease Resources
PA Lyme Resource Network - www.palyme.org
Lyme Disease.org - www.lymedisease.org
ILADS - International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society - http://www.ilads.org/lyme/about-lyme.php
Global Lyme Alliance - https://globallymealliance.org
Yahoo Lyme Support Groups by State - https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/statenamelyme/info
Lyme Net - Listing of Lyme groups by state and country - http://www.lymenet.org/SupportGroups/
Amy's Lyme Disease Blog - www.lymeadvokit.blogspot.com
