Community Organizations
Darien Moms Speak Out to Help Fight Lyme Disease
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Two Darien women know all too well that each of us is just one tick bite away from being profoundly affected by Lyme disease. Tara Vessels and Robyn Carpenter have both had their lives upended by the tick-borne illness. Vessels put her fashion business on hold to care for her son when he went from “being a happy and energetic 12-year old to someone completely sidelined by this disease,” she said. ___________
— an announcement from Global Lyme Alliance
___________
“He was a great athlete and student, but for six years he’s been so ill that he’s been in and out of schools and forced to stop playing sports. He basically lost a lot of his childhood.”
Meanwhile, Carpenter, a homemaker, says she went from being “healthy and active my entire life” to being “affected so dramatically that I was paralyzed and couldn’t walk, couldn’t drive, couldn’t function the way I always had.”
She was initially misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and underwent five procedures to remove fluid from her knees, cortisone shots, high-dose steroids and surgery.