Under Our Skin Page #4

of researching Lyme disease.

The research is something that I do

after I've done my day's work,

and if I have energy left,

I work into the night,

so I do the research on my own time.

Okay, hi, Travis.

My lab assistant Travis.

This part of the cellar is mine.

The rest of the cellar

is for other things in our life,

like Christmas ornaments.

This is my microscope.

I've owned this for 20 years.

It's a research microscope.

My work is building bridges

between what I can see

under the microscope

and what is going on in the human body.

The orthodox, conventional view

is that the bacteria

that causes Lyme disease

doesn't stay around very long

inside the human body.

That will be disproven,

and we will enter an arena now

where long-term, chronic infections

will be embraced

by the medical community,

and the patient will benefit.

Alan MacDonald is doing frontier research

about the role of Lyme disease,

Borrelia infection

in neurological illnesses,

and he's doing it against

substantial resistance

in the traditional academic community.

I'm one man working alone,

and there is great skepticism

that my work has meaning,

and I'm working hard

to get some evidence to say

that there is some meaning,

and time will tell.

Two groups of doctors

are pitted against each other

over just about every aspect

of Lyme disease,

from the very definition of the illness

to how it should be treated.

At the present time,

the traditional medical community

believes that there is

basically only an acute form

of the disease that is characterized

in a sound byte as "hard to get"

and "easy to treat."

For 10 or 15 years, there's been

a second group of Lyme doctors

that say, "No, that's not true."

"Lyme disease can be

a persistent, chronic illness

with many different symptoms."

So the question that is posed

at the present time is,

"Does chronic Lyme disease

really exist?"

We are driving from Orlando up

to North Carolina.

It's a little over 500 miles,

which is the closest spot

that we have to Florida

that actually has a clue about Lyme.

My biggest fear is that treatments

would be unsuccessful.

She could continue

to have a downward spiral.

Neurologically, she could have

things that are irreversible.

Yeah.

Okay.

While we're optimistic that

Mandy will steadily improve,

I'm skeptical that it's gonna be

smooth sailing.

She's so fragile,

and her central nervous system

is so irritable.

It doesn't take a lot to set her off.

We have to figure out what's the best way

to treat you intermittently

to get you to the best place

so that your immune system

is more in charge,

so that's a tricky business.

He said, "Well, we're gonna

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