Coping With Lyme: Heritage Students Push Awareness

With goal of raising awareness about a disease that has virtually sidelined her from life for the past six years, for a second year Heritage High School junior Maddy DuPuis organized Heritage Gets Ticked Off.

DuPuis set up a display at the school, and on Thursday handed out brochures, information to help identify tick bites – ticks transmit the disease to humans – and sold T-shirts to try to help other students avoid Lyme or get treatment early. Supervisor Ken Reid (R-Leesburg) dropped by to help out.

DuPuis remained homebound for most of her middle school years and has continued to have stretches where she stayed home from high school with illness. Despite missing so much time in middle school, doctors did not diagnose DuPuis with Lyme until two and half years ago. Nonetheless, she’s on track to graduate from high school in 2014.

“I am determined to not let this stop me from pursuing my education,” she said.

By raising awareness about the disease, she hopes to prevent other students from getting it or at least have them get treatment early.

“I have had a journey that I want no other student to have,” she said. “I think it’s very important that everyone around my age know what Lyme can do to you and the severity of what it can do to you.”

DuPuis believes she was bitten by a tick during a camping trip in the sixth grade. Anyone who believes they were bitten by a tick should get tested, she said.

Sarah Brown, a senior at Heritage and a neighbor of DuPuis', was diagnosed with the disease in 2011. The two had never really gotten to know each other very well growing up, but that changed after DuPuis’ mother, Carol, recommended their doctor in Fairfax County to help treat her Lyme.

“After that we were able to bond and talk about our issues and our struggles,” Brown said. Brown said she did not know she was bitten by a tick and never saw the classic “bull’s eye” bite mark that often provides a clue.

DuPuis had been tested prior to her diagnosis, but Lyme produces many false negatives and the test came back negative. For years, DuPuis’ Lyme went untreated.

“Unfortunately, it stays with you so long it does a lot of damage,” Carol DuPuis said. And while it is believed that Lyme never completely leaves the system, it can be controlled to some degree if detected early.

Carol DuPuis said besides the headaches, joint pain and lethargy, Lyme has damaged her daughter’s heart.

“I’ll sleep to 1 or 2 in the afternoon without realizing,” Maddy DuPuis said, often “too tired to think about anything except for the fact that I don’t feel good.”

Brown said she also has suffered from fatigue, joint pain, headaches and other symptoms.

“It affects every part of your body,” she said.

Both girls said many people have doubted their illnesses.

“I lot of them just don’t really understand what it is or give the time to understand what it is,” DePuis said.

Brown said, “It’s a struggle.” But she knows that her mom and her family and her doctor know it’s real. “I have my support group,” she said.

That support group includes her friendship with DuPuis, who said many other people she meets with Lyme are older.

“They don’t really understand the struggles that you go through in high school when you can’t go to school every day and you can’t see your friends and you can’t go out on Friday nights and have fun,” DuPuis said. “Definitely being able to go talk to Sarah and have her go to the same school as me and live just up the street has really helped me.”

Get more information about Lyme:

• Centers for Disease Control
• Loudoun Lyme