Why is ReDS so intractable?

When Annie first came down with the disease now known as ReDS, I read everything I could get my hands on about the topic. There wasn't much, mind you, and it was all rampant speculation, but I tracked every bit of it. Scientific papers, blogs, message boards, quack cure adverts. Since Annie's death, I haven't had the will to read very much at all. Anything remotely useful is inevitably meta-tagged and commented on with horrible, horrible slurs against ReDS victims. It's hard to filter out.

But I've heard they've been making progress lately, and what with the GEAS report, I'm feeling more obliged to dip my toes back into the information stream. Maybe I'm just adding to the rampant speculation, but I'm wondering if ReDS has biologicals similarities to other diseases.

A friend of mine once came down with a case of chronic Lyme's disease, and an article she sent me a long while ago made me wonder if ReDS works by a similar mechanism. Chronic Lyme's disease, is different than regular Lyme's disease, by the way. It doesn't always show up on normal tests for Lyme's because the bug hides so well. And the symptoms can be like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (a controversial beast itself).

Anyway, so what happens is the Lyme's bug hides out in places where the immune system doesn't think to look. Also it is able to shift itself into different forms to avoid antibiotics.

Article excerpt:

Once disseminated throughout the body, B. burgdorferi secludes itself and becomes difficult to detect through laboratory testing—and by the host’s immune system. The bacterium may hide in its host’s WBCs or cloak itself with host proteins. Furthermore, it tends to hide in areas not usually underimmune surveillance, such as scar tissue, the central nervous system, theeyes, and deep in joints and other tissues.

Phase and antigenic variations allow B. burgdorferi to change into pleomorphic forms to evade the immune system and antibiotics. The three known forms are the spiral shape that has a cell wall, the cell-wall-deficient form known as the “L-form” (named not for its shape but for Joseph Lister, the scientist who first identified these types ofcells), and the dormant or latent cyst form.

Encapsulating itself into the inactive cyst form enables the spirochete to hide undetected in the host for months, years, or decades until some form of immune suppression initiates a signal that it is safe for the cysts to open and the spirochetes to come forth and multiply. Each of these forms is affected by different types of antibiotics. If an antibiotic targets the bacterium’s cell wall, the spirochete will quickly morph into a cell-wall-deficient form or cyst form to evade the chemical enemy.

Yikes. Is this why ReDS is so intractable? Has it learned to be a superbug? In that case, developing a simple vaccine or antibiotic regimine probably isn't in the cards.

This will take some serious nanoengineering and machine learning to crack.

Getting Outta Here-- We Hope.

Shit. I just heard there will be more restrictions on transportation due to the spread of ReDS. It sounds like most restrictions center around Louisiana, but who knows?

X and I have finally settled on a plan of action to get out of here, but we still need to scrape up the funds to do it. I will definitely have to dip into my 401k, despite the massive penalties. But the rest? We're still working on that.

As for the destination: Oregon. It's a place that's been in the back of my mind for a long time-- before any of the current crises-- and it's where perhaps the most kickass survivalist I know lives with her boyfriend. S is a woman who once converted a strip of land from driveway blacktop to fully functioning permaculture garden in less than two years. Kickass. Seriously, check them out. Everything home-made or community-traded, like so many people these days. But they were always way ahead of the curve. I mean, selling cat milk? Who'da thought.

It's going to be such a tremendous improvement over our current situation, even if a part of us can never truly leave here.

We need to get crackin' if we're gonna duck any transportation bans.

Why We Stayed; Why We Stay.

I know, I know. We need to take action. We need to leave. This burnt-out city holds no future for us.

When people ask why X and I stay here, I usually only talk about the original reason: my firm sent me here on a temporary basis. It was a great opportunity to cultivate a new practice area that I could bring back west. A sweet deal, at the time: they even paid for rent. For a while.

Most people accept that version and leave the questioning at that-- if they're still here, they read the economic winds wrong too.

Closer friends know the more fundamental reason: after Annie's ReDS diagnosis, we couldn't move back. On the CDC's recommendation, the Feds forbid us from boarding airplanes or crossing state lines. Among other forms of quarantine.

Technically, we are free now-- X and I. We've had a clean bill of health for months. Socially, we are still treated like lepers-- anyone who has been in contact with a ReDS patient knows the experience-- but the TSA has removed our names from their "no-go" lists. Or so we've been told-- the bureaucracy there remains as byzantine and secretive as ever.

No, what's kept us here for months on months longer than we should have tolerated is the feeling-- unspoken, to each other and to the outside world-- that to leave here would be to leave her: for real, for good, for ever. Her ashes are here, so we can't help but feel some last essence of her being is as well.

Annie, Annie. Will you forgive us? If you were a little older, maybe I could imagine you wanting us to move on. But it's hard to know what a two-year-old would wish for their parents. You didn't know what death was, yet. Except as whatever was happening to you.

I guess we didn't really know, either.