Welcome to the Quote of the Week

April 20, 2008

I would like to begin the LymeQuotes blog with the sense of excitement at beginning a new discovery. The quote is from one of my favorite books on Lyme, Polly Murray’s The Widening Circle: A Lyme Disease Pioneer Tells her Story. One of the two women whose calls prompted the Yale investigation into the epidemic around Lyme, CT (Judith Mensch was the other), Ms Murray recalls her thoughts on that first trip to Yale to describe her and her family’s symptoms:

“Isn’t this exciting?” one doctor said. “There is certainly something unusual happening here. We must get into the field to investigate further. Bring in the patients to examine here at the clinic. We will map out the cases road by road.” They were spirited, like archaeologists who’d unearthed an intriguing artifact, some bit of pottery that promises even greater riches will surface with just a few more turns of the spade.

I certainly shared their enthusiasm. On the other hand, I’d been “in the field” for awhile, and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to figure everything out so fast. Whatever this illness was, it was complicated, in that it involved so many systems of the body, and my instincts told me it was going to elude definition for some time to come.

Murray, P. (1996). The Widening Circle: A Lyme Disease Pioneer Tells her Story. NY: St. Martin’s Press. p. 101.

As we debut the Lymebrary, I share that enthusiasm of exploring new territory, along with a sense of realism born of experience: we still have a long way to go.