Morgellon's Disease

swee2000 · Dec 22, 2007

I was curious if anyone has ever taken care of a patient diagnosed with Morgellons Disease or Delusional Parasitosis. What type of psychiatric care & treatment did the patient(s) require and need? Are they able to "recover" from it and resume living a somewhat "normal" life or do they require long-term psychiatric care?

nursemoe · Dec 22, 2007

Hi :

What a great question . I have some first hand exerience .

The people who suffer from morgellons do not need any mental health help because they are in fact suffering from a real medial physical illness not yet backed up by the medical comminunity although the CDC has made a slight whisper that this is in fact an illness and they infact have taken delusions of paricites off their web sight .

People suffering from morgellons will be more afraid of a person near them becuse the illess feels and is belived by most who have it very contagious . They are terrified you will contract this and be in the desolate isolation they have all beeen subjected to . Morgellons folks have lost the ability to hold down full time carrers and some have become homless and lost their families cause no one belives them .

I encourage all nurses who are non belivers of morgellons to purchace a handheld lighted microscope keep it with your PT supplies like your BP cuff . With this instrument you can see a morgellons PT's skin ( intact often ) through the scope like you'd look at a coin . You can then observe the thread like filimants in these people skin and read up on morgellons at morgellons.org

Most PT's can reach a remmision state under tha care of a BELIVING general Practionier with tetracycline treatment given for long term . Morgellons will never be concoured until Nurses stand up for the PT's and fight for them cause no one belives them . No Phyc is needed just compassion a listening understanding heart and if you do not understand them then SAY that .. Morgellons sufferers will be more than happy to provide education to you if you are willing to learn .

Mental health and those types of drugs only exaserbate morgellons and place the PT in more fear where they will begin to lie just to get out of the mental wards they get thrown in . Many nurses and doctors do have morgellons today cause when it was their turn to listen ,They did not and contacted it . so please help them and all of us who suffer this hedious illness and Thank you

sunnyand7777 · Feb 3, 2008

Yes, Morgellons is indeed real. I am an RN of 30 yrs and was infected in 2001. It has cost me almost everything including my career. Please believe and protect yourselves. The number one group of people afflicted with this disease is NURSES. Educate yourselves about this as much as possible since we do not understand the disease etiology at this present time.

For a real life understanding of how this affected one California RN go to The Charles E Holman Foundation http://www.cherokeechas.com/ and read Cindy's Diary. Since I was forced into an early medical retirement, I have been using my skills to help in getting this situation recognized and researched. The wonderful people invovled in this effort (most of which are sick with Morgellons themselves) have made the CDC finally take action. It has been a long and painful road, but we have made progress with this accomplishment.

Realize, please, that the danger to nurses and their families is ever present and treat patients with respect as well as with strict universial precautions.

Thank you so much for seeking to understand.

Sunny :yelclap:

EmmaG, RN · Feb 3, 2008

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080118/NATION/36179823/1002

CDC enlists military to study skin ailment

By Jennifer Harper

January 18, 2008

The description alone is disquieting: Victims have bulbous pimples glutted with dark fibers, they feel crawling sensations under their skin, they're fatigued, confused, depressed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially call it the "unexplained illness." Yesterday, the federal agency announced it would formally investigate the condition-known as Morgellons syndrome-and is bringing in the military to help it do it.

The cause and risk factors are unknown, though most of the cases are showing up in California, Florida and Texas, said Dr. Michele Pearson, CDC's principal investigator. The agency is spending $545,000 and enlisting the help of the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology as well as the American Academy of Dermatology to conduct "immediate" and "rigorous" research.

EmmaG, RN · Feb 3, 2008

With a colleague, Rhonda Casey, a pediatrician, and a $4,000 grant from the Morgellons Research Foundation, Wymore got fresh fiber samples from 20 Morgellons patients. He brought them to fiber analysts at the Tulsa Police Department's forensic lab. The red and blue fibers did not match any of some 900 commercially available textiles in its database. They were not modified rayon, nylon, cotton or anything previously catalogued. Then forensic scientists tried to burn one of the fibers, heating it to 700 degrees, to determine if it matched any of 85,000 known organic compounds. Again, nothing matched. And the heat, which typically vaporizes any organic material, did nothing to the blue fiber.

-----------

In 2006, Leitao, who was trained as a biologist and worked as an electron microscopist; along with Ginger Savely, a nurse practitioner; and Raphael Stricker, a hematologist, published a paper in the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology reporting that 79 out of 80 Morgellons patients they studied also were infected with Borrelia burgdorferi, the tick-borne bacteria that cause Lyme disease. Savely and Stricker, who practice medicine in San Francisco, specialize in treating patients with chronic Lyme disease with high-dose antibiotics - a controversial condition and treatment that many mainstream doctors discount. In interviews, Savely and Leitao hypothesized that perhaps Lyme disease or other infections weakened the body's immune system, which allowed Morgellons to take hold. In their paper, they theorized that the fibers appeared to be some type of cellulose. And they noted that Morgellons infections seemed to take off after patients had some kind of contact with soil or animal waste products.

With their new theory that the fibers could be made of some kind of cellulose, Savely and Stricker, both of whom are on the MRF medical advisory board, contacted Vitaly Citovsky, a plant biologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Stricker suspected that agrobacteria, common bacteria found just about everywhere that cause tumorous crown galls to form in trees, were somehow related to Morgellons because agrobacteria like to bind with cellulose. Citovsky studies agrobacteria and its use in genetically modifying plants. It was his lab that showed that agrobacteria can genetically transform any organism, including human cells, by transferring DNA into it.

http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080203/FEAT/802030328

indigo girl · Feb 3, 2008

Fascinating article, Emmanul Goldstein. It's good to keep an open mind

about this disease. I find it hard to believe that so many people are

being called crazy with these types of physical symptoms. I also have

to wonder how cellulose can be found in human bodies. What could

cause that? Really, how can the human body manufacture cellulose?

Obviously, humans cannot, therefore another organism is present that

can do this if it has been proven that the fibers were really extruded

from people, and are in fact cellulose. It's a mystery.

EmmaG, RN · Feb 3, 2008

I have a hard time understanding how some can dismiss this as a psych issue, when there are clearly physical symptoms.

Docs are claiming that these people are scratching/picking sores onto their bodies, then fibers in the environment are getting into the wounds. If the research described above is to be believed, the fibers are NOT of any in the textile database, so that theory doesn't seem to hold water.

Interesting too the seeming connection between Lyme infection, soil/animal waste exposure and this condition.

EricJRN, MSN, RN · Feb 3, 2008

The problem with the recent AJCD article is that you're dealing with at least one author who has a highly questionable history related to research integrity. The most infamous example from this author related to a 1985 publication regarding... a fairly new, somewhat mysterious disease (AIDS). The 1985 NEJM article had to be retracted by the journal in 1991.

Check out the last entry at this link:

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/not93-177.html

EmmaG, RN · Feb 3, 2008

Wonder if he learned his lesson? He doesn't appear to be involved in the fiber analysis done at Oklahoma State University, though.

http://www.healthsciences.okstate.edu/morgellons/docs/Wymore-position-statement-2-19-07.pdf

Still, 100% of the patients, that were felt to genuinely have
Morgellons Disease, have large microscopic-to small macroscopic fibers visible
under their outer layer of skin. These fibers are not associated with scabs or
open lesions, nor are they under scarred tissue. The idea that Morgellons fibers
are mere fuzz and lint, simply sticking to the lesions and scabs, is not possible
based on the observations that were just described. These fibers are under
"normal-appearing" areas of skin. In contrast, such fibers have never been
observed in even one person who does not claim to have Morgellons. Clearly,
there is something different in the skin of purported Morgellons sufferers
compared to the non-Morgellons population.

OSU-CHS physicians/researchers have physical evidence of Morgellons Disease

Morgellons is not psychiatric in origin

Morgellons is an emergent disease

http://morgellonsusa.com/files/vision_statement.pdf

http://www.healthsciences.okstate.edu/morgellons/vision.cfm

And the plot thickens.

allthingsbright · Feb 3, 2008

My SIL says she has this--has been to many docs and cant get rid of it. And yes, they have told her she has scabies (and no, numerous tx havent worked) and a mental problem. It is really debilitating--whatever it is...she doesnt sleep at night, is constantly feeling like she has stuff coming out of her skin, has the creepy crawlies, etc. Shes had it for 3 years after being exposed to extensive water damage--her sister has it too from the same incident.

UGH! I just feel for these people!! It really is heartbreaking to see what it has done to her life!!!!

GadgetRN71, ASN, RN · Feb 3, 2008

People who have this are blowing their heads off because the medical community is shunning them and passing them over to the psych doctors who are saying the pts are doing this to themselves. With the bioengineering the government is doing and they are gene splicing bugs to change them from a "bad bug" to a "good bug" now they are going from invading the plants to invading the people. This started with a common enemy of the cotton plant. the government did some genetic splicing to make the bugs more "cotton friendly" and now they are imbedding into the human skin. There are people who say that they were infected from new packs of underwear. Some articles I read say you can see them in cotton swabs. hold a single cotton swab up close to your eyes and watch closely. Some of the cotton fibres sticking out will start moving like crazy. Scary stuff.

Good post...this sounds paranoid, but I don't find it impossible that this disease could be government bioengineering run amok. Remember when it came out that the government was testing radioactive materials on those with MR in the 50's? For all we know, this could be testing of biological warfare. LOL, I sound like Fox Mulder.

sunnyand7777 · Feb 4, 2008

i thought i would share this information. the agrobacterium finding has been known for several months, but what the implications are is still in the research stage. i am putting up a few sentances about it. also, the first morgellons medical conference is set for march, 2008 in austin, tx. one of the key researchers in this agrobacterium finding will be there as a presenter.

sunny

agrobacterium, a plant pathogen, has been linked to morgellons syndrome

agrobacterium is a genus of gram-negative bacteria that uses horizontal gene transfer to cause tumors in plants. agrobacterium tumefaciens is the most commonly studied species in this genus. agrobacterium is well known for its ability to transfer dna between itself and plants, and for this reason it has become an important tool for plant improvement by genetic engineering.

the agrobacterium genus is quite heterogeneous. recent taxonomic studies have reclassified all of the agrobacterium species in to new genera, such as ruegeria, pseudorhodobacter and stappia, but most species have been reclassified as rhizobium species.

although generally seen as an infection in plants, agrobacterium can be responsible for opportunistic infections in humans with weakened immune systems,[1][2] but has not been shown to be a primary pathogen in otherwise healthy individuals. a 2000 study published by the national academy of sciences suggested that agrobacterium attaches to and genetically transforms several types of human cells by integrating its t-dna into the human cell genome. the study was conducted under laboratory conditions and states that it does not draw any conclusions regarding related biological activity in nature.[3]

there is a conjectured connection with morgellons syndrome. dr. stricker, along with dr. citovsky, mrf board member from the state university of new york at stony brook and an expert on plant pathogens, reported in january, 2007, that morgellons skin fibers appear to contain cellulose. five skin samples of morgellons patients contained evidence of dna from agrobacterium.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/agrobacterium

scientific/medical conference on morgellons

http://www.cherokeechas.com/austin308.htm

"searching for the uncommon thread"

march 29, 2008

8:00 am - 5:00 pm

austin, texas

this event is being sponsored by the the new morgellons order, a non-profit organization with irs 501 © (3) status. in honor of it's founder, the nmo is also known as the charles e. holman foundation. our all volunteer staff is dedicated to fundraising for scientific research and medical education, raising public awareness, and providing support for those who suffer with this unexplained illness.

although much of the lecture content will be geared toward medical professionals and scientists, we encourage patients and supporters to attend as well. our goal is an informative, educational and inspiring event that will be beneficial to all!

guest speakers:

randy s. wymore, ph.d.

tulsa, ok

research director, center for investigation of morgellons

oklahoma state university-center for health sciences

topic: "research update"

raphael b. stricker, md

san francisco, ca

sub-specialty training in internal medicine, hematology, and immunology

board of directors ilads, international lyme and associated diseases society

board of directors clda, california lyme disease association

topic: "controversies in newly emerging disease"

elizabeth rasmussen, ph.d.

laramie, wy

doctorate in clinical psychology, author of "debunking dop"

sub-specialty training in microbiology and immunology

topic: "dermatology...how it is taught and how it is practiced"

harriet bishop, president, txlda

austin, tx

morgellons patient

president of texas lyme disease association

topic: "staying positive to cope with morgellons"

ginger savely, fnp-c

san francisco, ca

pursuing her doctorate in nursing practice with a thesis thesis on morgellons, ms savely practices in sf, ca

having seen over 200 morgellons patients, her experience has become world renown.

topic: "clinical aspects of morgellons"

mark darrah, bs

stony brook university

morgellons research director

mark darrah's research includes sem, ftir and raman microspectroscopy. presentation will also include findings by dr. vitaly citovsky on identification of agrobacterium as related to morgellons disease.

topic: "morgellons research presentation of scanning electron microscopy and fiber/substance analysis "

david gibbs, ms, cdrp

austin, tx

social security specialist, disability claims professionals of texas

experienced and successful disability representation for morgellons and lyme disease

topic: "social security benefits as related to morgellons disease"

gregory v. smith, md, faap

gainesville, ga

pediatrician in private practice for 28 years

board certified by the american board of pediatrics.

fellow, american academy of pediatrics

member ga chapter of aap including serving

6 year term on the ga chapter board of directors

morgellons patient