Hall: Too many out of touch with Lyme disease

Musician Daryl Hall says the symptoms had been there for 3 years but Lyme disease hit him hard in 2005, when he collapsed after a gig in Phoenix.

“I suddenly came down with a really high fever, and I was just completely incapacitated,” he tells Consumers Digest. “My neck really stiffened up, my arms stiffened up; I had terrible stiffness, and I didn’t know what it was.”

It turns out the Hall & Oates frontman wasn’t carrying just Lyme disease but also bartonella, ehr­lichia, rickettsia and other tick-borne bacteria. More than 6 years later, Hall still tries to keep his chronic disease at bay.

He still performs and records albums—most recently “Laughing Down Crying” in 2011—and he hosts the TV series “Live From Daryl’s House.”

Hall attributes his ability to maintain that schedule to a daily regimen of medicine and pacing his time. The days of 6-month tours are over, because expending too much energy or adrenaline can cause his disease to flare up, which spurs heart palpitations, mood swings, stiffness and tremors. The flare-ups have eased to about three times per year from once per month. Hall says he’s angry that medical professionals aren’t doing enough to help others who have the disease.

“There’s no research done,” he says. “It’s not recognized as being a very serious disease, and that runs counter to the hundreds of thousands of people who have the same symptoms.”

Hall encourages people who have or who suspect that they might have Lyme disease to visit International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society’s website (ilads.org) to learn more about treatments. Patients need antibiotics immediately, and Hall says people who have Lyme disease must share their stories and treatment regimens, because doctors aren’t doing this.

“The grapevine is the only thing we’ve got going,” he says.