Under Our Skin 2: Emergence

1

It's almost like I started

building a bridge

to the other side.

Now I'm gonna go walk back into my body

and start again.

It's daunting.

We were told it was

going to be a long road.

It doesn't mean that I don't think

that maybe at some point,

Sean might change his mind.

Push. Here comes

your baby.

There you go.

Jared's test came back positive

for the lyme antibody.

He may end up getting very

sick someday because of it.

My life was so uncomfortable to be in,

that I don't know that I

would've wanted to be here,

had I not had stronger family

connections, you know.

She couldn't hold her head up.

She couldn't sit up.

She couldn't talk anymore.

They insisted that she's making it up.

We allege that Dr. Jones

prescribed that antibiotic

to a patient he did not know

and had never examined.

If they succeed in

taking his license away,

I just don't feel that

he's gonna feel like

he needs to be here anymore.

They decided to suspend my license.

Financially, I've lost everything.

There's a message that's gonna

be sent to the other doctors,

that it's not safe to

take a lyme patient on.

So there's something funny.

I don't know what

that something funny is.

At what point will people say,

the emperor has no clothes?

How many more people are gonna suffer

before the truth comes out?

A common disease

appears to be much more

common than first thought.

About 30,000 cases of lyme disease

are reported each year.

The centers for disease control now say

the real number of cases

is more like 300,000.

The CDC put out a press release,

saying lyme is 10 times more common

than the lyme statistics say it is,

but we kind of already knew that,

and what we would like to have

seen in that press release

is, here's what we're doing about it.

We may be patients, but

we are not patient anymore.

We've had enough.

We didn't have to work outside...

It stopped raining so

you get to work inside?

We were living in Connecticut,

and we had to find a place that was safe,

that was tick-safe.

We were angry, we were fearful,

and here we are in Hawaii, in paradise;

and truly, it is paradise for us

regarding lyme disease.

Last time we met, we were sitting

and watching a healthy little boy.

I didn't like to use

the word lyme disease,

however when he was about three,

it was pretty evident

that he was getting sick.

One day, we got into the city

and we walked 10, maybe 15 minutes,

and my son turned to me,

Jared turned to me

and said, I'm too tired,

mommy, I'm too tired.

I can't walk.

So, I had to use the word,

that my son had lyme disease.

In utero, fetal transmission

of lyme disease to a fetus

is something that has been

of concern to patients.

We've looked carefully at that.

There have been numerous studies.

There's not been one documented case

of congenital lyme disease.

My story proves that it's not anecdotal,

that it is happening probably every day.

Children are being infected in utero,

and that if something isn't done,

we're gonna end up with

very, very sick children.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Continuing hearings on the case

of Dr. Charles Jones.

The two children who were subject

of the initial allegations

are doing well.

They are free of tick-born diseases,

and they're thriving.

In my estimate, I've healed

over 18,000 children.

The main effect of

the licensing board actions

has been financial.

It's been a horrendous expense

and continues to be so.

I think they must be touching

near a million dollars right now.

I'm going into my seventh

year of bankruptcy.

I'm still in litigation

with blue cross blue shield,

and unfortunately, they have really

just no motivation

to bring this to a close.

Dr. Jemsek's license

is suspended for one year

and the conditions to be determined.

After I was forced

to leave north Carolina

and move

to Washington, D.C.

I never really lost my license,

but I wasn't allowed to practice medicine

the way it ought to be practiced.

And then I end up owing

millions of dollars,

and that just wiped me out.

I lost everything.

Sean and I got married in 2005,

and then I guess my

treatment was complicated.

It made me scared for the

future of my relationship,

that my spouse was gonna go

because my spouse

couldn't take it anymore,

or this was just, like, too much.

The last two years of our relationship

weren't doing very well at all,

and so Sean and I ended up

getting a divorce.

He probably wanted something

a little less stressful

than lyme, as did I.

You know, we didn't really know

what we were getting into.

You're like, man, we just

got married, you know.

Bam, I'm in the hospital,

and bam, this is happening,

and bam, that's happening,

and you just feel like

you're in the water,

and it's up to your head.

The problem with lyme disease

is nobody really knows what it is.

They've heard something

about flu-like symptoms,

and if a person is in bed all day

because they can't stand bright light

and they can't even go outside,

they think that this is malingering.

So there isn't a broad

kind of community support

for the ill family.

There wasn't for us.

This had a tremendous effect

on my wife and on my children,

and this family is no more.

There was a divorce,

and the family has gone

its separate ways.

After "under our skin,"

I was unable to continue

working as a medical doctor.

I was unable to remember

details of my daily work.

I wouldn't be able to remember

medical terminology.

It was very precarious.

It was very difficult.

He wasn't able to be functioning

the way he used to function.

I love you, my love.

See you later.

We were aware that it

was going to be necessary

to have a complete panel of lyme test

because of my exposure over 30 years.

These are the Harvard brain

DNA extracts in this tube.

The tests did not come back

with evidence that I had lyme,

but the doctor who was taking care of me

came to a preliminary conclusion

that it might be frontotemporal dementia,

and that the usual pattern

of survival is 3 to 5 years.

I was thinking about

not continuing practice.

You know, the licensing board

wins, the kids lose,

and while I was making this decision,

a child came into the office,

and he had never talked.

One of the times he was running around,

he came up before me, and

I put my hands on his cheeks

and said, "I hope I have the key"

that can unlock your brain,"

and he's off running,

and I thought, I'd spoken to the air.

He came back four months after

being diagnosed and treated,

walked in the door,

didn't run in the door,

and came right in front of me

and put my hands on his cheeks

and looked me directly in the eyes

and said, "thank you

for giving me the key"

that unlocked my brain."

And I said, that's that.

I'm gonna stay.

When I got out of the wheelchair at Dr.

Jones' office,

it was almost like you have

your life taken away from you,

and then it's like getting

your life back again,

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