[UA] Disease Fun.

[Kevin Patrick Hogan]

> It won't come up on my browser.  What's the deal?

It's not of horrible length.  I will just cut'n'paste it.  --K

Doctors puzzled over bizarre infection surfacing in South Texas

Web Posted: 05/12/2006 10:51 AM CDT

Deborah Knapp
KENS 5 Eyewitness News

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 Wilsons 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 Morgellons 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.