In this improbable memoir unfolding in real time, author Dave Bexfield—misdiagnosed for 17 years with multiple sclerosis—takes readers along on his quest to solve an epic health mystery. Will his unlikely discovery that he and countless others have undiagnosed Lyme disease lead to one of the greatest medical breakthroughs in modern history?

Part 1 – Preface | Sit Down Before Reading

Sit Down Before Reading | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 1

100 Meters | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 2

In this improbable memoir unfolding in real time, author Dave Bexfield—misdiagnosed for 17 years with multiple sclerosis—takes readers along on his quest to solve an epic health mystery. Will his unlikely discovery that he and countless others have undiagnosed Lyme disease lead to one of the greatest medical breakthroughs in modern history?

About the Author:
Sit Down Before Reading author Dave Bexfield was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2006 at the age of 37. After his diagnosis he founded ActiveMSers.org, a not-for-profit, science-based website to help others manage the disease, growing it into one of the longest running and largest MS websites in the world. Recognized as a leading health advocate, Dave was highlighted in The New York Times, promoted in The Wall Street Journal, and featured on the covers and in the pages of countless health publications. 
Despite these achievements, every attempt to slow his MS met with failure as he tried 7 disease modifying therapies, volunteered for 5 clinical trials, and underwent the most aggressive treatment available for MS: a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Over $2 million has been spent on his unsuccessful care, leaving him profoundly disabled, restricted to a wheelchair, and heavily reliant on daily caregiving assistance from his unbelievably patient wife of 30 years, Laura.
In the fall of 2021—after 15 UTIs in 15 months and a frightening bout of psychosis—Mr. Bexfield made an astonishing discovery: he had been misdiagnosed. Bitten by a tick 17 years earlier in Lyme, CT, he instead was suffering from a neurological form of Lyme disease, Lyme encephalomyelitis. But then Dave faced a new unbelievable challenge. Without a confirming positive Lyme test, no physician would administer the one treatment regarded as medically necessary for his condition.
Desperate and out of options, the professional writer began penning Sit Down Before Reading, a real-time memoir to expose this travesty. But in his research, he made a horrific discovery. The flawed laboratory tests for Lyme disease—those approved and promoted by the CDC and infectious disease societies globally—have resulted in countless cases of the tickborne illness circulating undetected worldwide, misdiagnosed as MS and myriad other autoimmune diseases. He had uncovered perhaps one of the greatest failures in modern medicine.

Operation Overturn | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 3

Pit of Despair | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 5

Breaking Brain | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 6

Final Hail Mary | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 7

As I waded into the horrifying detritus of other lives crushed by my newly discovered disease, I unbelievably uncovered evidence of what could be one of the greatest failures in the history of modern medicine. And it affects everyone diagnosed with MS.

Part 2 – Introduction | Sit Down Before Reading

Zebra Found | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 10

Crazy Not Crazy | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 11

Roll of the Die | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 12

One must be true. Either I win a Nobel prize for discovering that a common antibiotic effectively treats MS … or I win a Nobel for exposing a catastrophic flaw in the diagnosing of Lyme disease that will result in scores of MSers getting undiagnosed.

A Nobel Act | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 14

I never should have discovered my multiple sclerosis misdiagnosis. To understand just how incomprehensibly fortunate I was means suspending all knowledge of how odds work. Because everything had to line up just so. Unbelievably, it did.

Never Ever | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 16

The best possibility for me to reverse my myriad disabilities brought on my Lyme encephalomyelitis—to have a fighting chance to be able to put one foot in front of another and walk again—means IV antibiotics, universally deemed “medically necessary.”

Cure Thyself! Musings on the cure-all spice that seriously annoys me
https://www.sitdownbeforereading.com/post/cure-thyself

Taking a Stand | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 18

I was struggling to keep lofty expectations in check. I wanted to soar skyward, lift above the clouds. But after months of failing to get appropriate treatment for my Lyme disease, it was hard not to get demoralized. Then an unusual opportunity presented itself.

Clear Eyes, Open Heart | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 20

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Despite trying for months to find a doctor to treat my Lyme disease, all outreach had been rebuffed. I had to let every arrow fly and think outside the box, outside the state, and outside the realm of probability.

An Improbable Proposal | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 21

If traditional testing couldn’t detect my neurological form of Lyme disease, it wouldn’t be able to detect anyone else’s either. An unimaginable disaster loomed; I had to warn the world’s leading researchers in multiple sclerosis and Lyme disease.

Iceberg Right Ahead | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 22

The evidence is stark, shattering, overwhelming. Hundreds of thousands of people infected with Lyme disease are being misdiagnosed with MS worldwide, the result of perfect storms colliding. I make sense of it all: how it happened, who's affected, and what's next.

Part 3 – Introduction | Sit Down Before Reading

Meredith was diagnosed with a “textbook” case of multiple sclerosis. So was Gary. So was Daniel. Gregory was crowned with textbook neuropathy. Good thing none had Lyme disease. But shockingly, Emma did. And her case? Anything but textbook.

Textbook | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 23

There are countless examples of me acting as a moron, so when I see amateurs—rank amateurs—trying to edge onto my turf, it irks me. IRKS in all caps. Enter into evidence the most moronic of wars that don’t involve swords or firearms: the so-called Lyme Wars.

The Moronic Wars | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 26

In medicine, barring an outright cure, researchers ultimately will face failure. If scientists keep trying and fail a little less with each attempt, that’s progress. But what if the answer lies not tucked away in the incremental successes, but buried deeply within those failures?

Fail Better | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 29

Chronic illness can overrun the strongest of bulwarks, dooming the tightest of relationships—and the waves were breaching our fortifications. Survival was no longer a given. Desperate times called for equally desperate measures.

Denial of Care | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 30

Everything that could go wrong went wrong. Safeguards put into place to confirm research catastrophically failed. Faulty research was then elevated into canon and crowned settled science. History, tragically embodying the cliché, has repeated itself.

A Perfect Storm | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 34

Traditionally, red flags warn of danger. When it comes to Lyme disease and misdiagnosis, readers of this real-time memoir have been extrapolating red flags from its pages for the past year. Some hit you gradually, while others present with far more urgency.

Red Flags | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 35

Did a health advocate with zero formal medical education just make the most monumental discovery in the history of modern medicine? Part IV features a series of unbelievable twists.

Part 4 – Introduction | Sit Down Before Reading

If only doctors had put together the broken bits of evidence, it would have revealed a stunning truth. Instead, a single tragic case of misdiagnosis irrevocably changed the course of history.

Telltale Shards | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 37

There is one widely accepted theory in multiple sclerosis that has the near universal support of researchers. What happens when a single anomaly threatens to torch the revered hypothesis?

Bad Apple | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 38

If the devil is in the details, we take the deepest of dives into potential diagnostic markers that just might be able to separate Lyme disease from multiple sclerosis and other similar conditions.

The Goldilocks Zone | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 39

The treatment landscape for neurological Lyme disease that has been left untreated for years would appear to be barren, desolate. Hope, though, has bloomed from some unexpected recent precipitation.

Antidotes | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 40

Stories of likely misdiagnoses have been broadsiding me with the frequency of unexpected new hit releases of Taylor Swift songs. What if Lyme disease really is as widespread and calamitous as sky-is-falling alarmists have warned?

Copious Mischief | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 41

Pain scales typically peak at 10. Amplifier volumes, at least prior to the release of This is Spinal Tap, typically peak at 10. This installment of SDBR turns it up to 11. Something is decidedly amiss in the theory of autoimmune disease.

Eleven | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 42

There are more than 80 autoimmune diseases. And a frightening symptom—one I personally experienced—suspiciously ripples among most of them. Is it mere coincidence or something more sinister?

Brian | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 43

For more than a century, the perfect storms of autoimmune disease have been colliding violently with each other, each one reinforcing one another, creating a devastating feedback loop—an immaculate storm.

The Immaculate Storm | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 44

The smoking gun—revealing the vastness and insidious spread of the Lyme disease epidemic—has been found, as the immaculate storm continues to rage.

The Smoking Gun | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 45

The smoking gun wasn’t a gun after all, but a flamethrower, setting the world—and dormant cases of Lyme disease—aflame at an unprecedented rate.

The Smoking Flamethrower | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 46

Little Sparks | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 47

In this improbable memoir unfolding in real time, author Dave Bexfield—misdiagnosed for 17 years with multiple sclerosis—takes readers along on his quest to solve an epic health mystery. Will his unlikely discovery that he and countless others have undiagnosed Lyme disease lead to one of the greatest medical breakthroughs in modern history?


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sit Down Before Reading author Dave Bexfield was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2006 at the age of 37. After his diagnosis he founded ActiveMSers.org, a not-for-profit, science-based website to help others manage the disease, growing it into one of the longest running and largest MS websites in the world. Recognized as a leading health advocate, Dave was highlighted in The New York Times, promoted in The Wall Street Journal, and featured on the covers and in the pages of countless health publications. 
Despite these achievements, every attempt to slow his MS met with failure as he tried 7 disease modifying therapies, volunteered for 5 clinical trials, and underwent the most aggressive treatment available for MS: a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Over $2 million has been spent on his unsuccessful care, leaving him profoundly disabled, restricted to a wheelchair, and heavily reliant on daily caregiving assistance from his unbelievably patient wife of 30 years, Laura.
In the fall of 2021—after 15 UTIs in 15 months and a frightening bout of psychosis—Mr. Bexfield made an astonishing discovery: he had been misdiagnosed. Bitten by a tick 17 years earlier in Lyme, CT, he instead was suffering from a neurological form of Lyme disease, Lyme encephalomyelitis. But then Dave faced a new unbelievable challenge. Without a confirming positive Lyme test, no physician would administer the one treatment regarded as medically necessary for his condition.
Desperate and out of options, the professional writer began penning Sit Down Before Reading, a real-time memoir to expose this travesty. But in his research, he made a horrific discovery. The flawed laboratory tests for Lyme disease—those approved and promoted by the CDC and infectious disease societies globally—have resulted in countless cases of the tickborne illness circulating undetected worldwide, misdiagnosed as MS and myriad other autoimmune diseases. He had uncovered perhaps one of the greatest failures in modern medicine.

Sit Down Before Reading

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