Morgellons segment will appear on "The Doctors" today 7/9/09. Below is a synopsis of the program. It appears that Dr. Harvey was interviewed for this program.
www.thedoctorstv.com/main/show_synopsis/260?section=synopsis Check the website for you local listing.
Cindy
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Below from the link above:
Curing an Unknown Sickness
Imagine being sick but no doctor is able to properly diagnose your problem. Forty-year-old Crystal's life has completely turned upside down by a condition that is so unusual and hard to explain, she is afraid to tell her family about it.
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“I feel like bugs are inside of me,” Crystal says. “It feels like something’s actually biting my eye. There’s pinprick sensations on your skin. You get very itchy. It’s totally like a bad science-fiction story. It’s like pure evil, I swear."
Crystal has visit doctors about her condition, but none of them understand or can treat her symptoms.
“The medical society has shunned us,” Crystal adds. “I saw a doctor who told me I was delusional.”
Crystal suffers from Morgellons disease, a rare condition where people affected say that it feels like parasites are crawling under their skin. Symptoms of the disease include: skin lesions, crawling sensations both within and on the skin surface, fatigue, cognitive difficulties, such as short-term memory loss and attention deficits, behavioral effects, and fibers, granules, black specks and fuzzballs reported in and on skin lesions.
Crystal’s symptoms become so overwhelming, she spends most of her time vacuuming her home and washing her bedding in an effort to get rid of what she believes are bugs. She also puts on ointment to reduce the crawling sensation. She has even put bleach directly on her skin to try and stop the sensations.
Crystal has had a difficult time finding treatments for her symptoms because Morgellons disease, however, is not recognized by many in the medical community. Dr. Harvey explains this condition. “The first thing you really need to know about Morgellons is that Morgellons is in no medical book,” says Dr. William T. Harvey, a Morgellons expert who has successfully treated the disease. “In fact, the word wasn’t even brought up from the history of medicine until 2002, [and it was] by a person who’s child had something like [Crystal has suffered from]. [The woman] had no idea how to get it solved, and no physician who could give her an answer. So she wound up going back to the history books and found something that sounded like this from France in the 1600s.”
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Before the disease was known as Morgellons, doctors told patients who had these symptoms they suffered from delusions of parasitosis. “People who had parasites crawling on them and the docs couldn’t find them,” Dr. Harvey says. “The assumption was that it was a delusional problem, that there are no bugs. Patients came to see me being told that they had delusions of parasitotis, but they really looked like they were sick.”
Research on patients showed both emotional and physical problems. By magnifying areas of the skin, Dr. Harvey saw possible causes of their itchiness, such as parasites, bacteria and viruses. He began to understand the disease and found ways to treat it, including using anti-parasitics, anti-bacterials and antibiotics.
“We think the fact that they respond well to treatment just implies that we are dealing with agents.” Dr. Harvey says.
Dr. Travis tells Crystal that Dr. Harvey will take her on as a patient and try to treat her disease. And because more still needs to be learned about Morgellons, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is funding research about the ailment.
“Getting past this disease is not an undoable thing,” Dr. Harvey says.