Name: Jenga | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 15 by Sit Down Before Reading in Sit Down Before Reading: A Medical Memoir
Duration: 21 min 5 s
Description: Tests form the backbone of eliminating Lyme disease from consideration when diagnosing MS. The tower of new coincidences in my case kept getting stacked atop the already swaying Jenga tower of coincidences built up over the last 17 years.

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?

Sit Down Before Reading: A Medical Memoir

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

The Widow Maker | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 4

Tests form the backbone of eliminating Lyme disease from consideration when diagnosing MS. The tower of new coincidences in my case kept getting stacked atop the already swaying Jenga tower of coincidences built up over the last 17 years.

Jenga | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 15

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.

Jenga | Sit Down Before Reading: Chapter 15

Sit Down Before Reading

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