Hi Everyone,

My amazing brother Paddy and his equally amazing colleagues Cariosa and Brenda are running the Connemara half marathon on April 10th to raise funds for my short follow up trip back to the USA! I've made huge progress thanks to the €14K that I raised here before, when I was originally heading out to the USA. So we are using this page again to help raise some badly needed funds to keep the health improvements going, so that I can continue to help spread the word on Lyme Disease in Ireland and prevent others from falling prey to the same fate.

I can't tell you how grateful I am to Paddy, Cariosa and Brenda for the months of hard work and training they have put into this. I'm working with the event organisers to try and use this opportunity to raise awareness of Lyme among joggers, who are a very high risk group. There are 3,000 runners in this years event. Even if we got through to a third of them that's still 1,000 people, who will hopefully spread the word on Lyme futher out into the community! Everyone who sponsors the guys will be entered into a draw for a 3 day camping pitch pass for a family of 4 which also includes a 1 day family pass to the Pirate Adventure Park! The draw will take place on the 7th of May. 

Since I set up my awareness raising campaign at www.elainefightslyme.com and on my facebook page Elaine Fights Lyme I have managed secure a 33% reduction on testing costs with the leading European Tick Borne Diseases laboratory, for anyone who believes they may be infected. I have helped countless individuals to access testing and understand more about Lyme Disease and directed them towards treatment options for themselves and sometimes their families. I'm receiving contact from people directly on a weekly basis since I started up. Some of there stories have been just devastating and not unlike my own, which is detailed below.

Apart from appearing frequently on national and local radio and print media this past 18 months, I was invited as a guest speaker to the Suffering The Silence Conference in London in October 2015, where I gave a talk entitled "The Role of Creativity in Chronic Illness", available to read on the Elaine Fights Lyme Facebook Page. I was a nominee this year for the Most Inspirational Women of the Year Award for Mayo 2015, for all of my on going work on continuing to raise awareness on Lyme Disease.  I have collborated with MSD Animal Health Care and am currently very excited to be teaming up with the Leave No Trace environmental group to help gain access to those working and recreating in the great outdoors, so that I can help them to better protect themselves. I've written an article for the latest edition of their e-newsletter and I've just completed an awareness training session with them this week, with lots more follow on to happen soon!

I was recently invited to speak at the Soroptomist Ireland organised event to celebrate International Womens Day 2016 and I'm continuing to seek out as many opportunites as possible to keep raising the profile on Lyme on this Island.

The treatment I have undergone these past 18 months has been utterly gruelling at times. The treatment for Lyme is sometimes worse than the symptoms and the dying bacteria poison your system, but for the first time in my life I am seeing and feeling progress and I can't tell you how amazing that feels!

Lyme is here. It's not going to go away, so we need to learn to live with it with awareness and know how to protect ourselves and our loved ones from this potentially life threatening and utterly debilitating disease. Any little bit of sponsorship you can give to the joggers would be so gratefully received and directed completely towards my treatment and awareness raising fund. The better I get, the more awareness raising I can do and the more hope I can give to others who are suffering with this horrendous diease,

Thanks so much, stay tick saavy this coming spring and summer,

Elaine X

Hi Everyone,

My name is Elaine Griffin and I am a 42 year old artist and musician living in Westport, Co. Mayo, Ireland. I am also a part-time lecturer at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin, Ireland. For those of you who know me well, you will know that I have been struggling with Chronic Health issues for the last 24 years, since I was 18 years old, so pretty much all of my adult life. My relentless search for answers to the cause of my debilitating, unremitting pain, physical discomfort and exhaustion have, over the last 10 years alone brought me around the globe, having received treatment from Ireland, Australia, India, Germany and the UK and I’ve spent close on €150,000 in the process. So, it was heartbreaking for me to finally be properly diagnosed by a spealist laboratory in Germany, last November, with Chronic Lyme Disease and 8 other bacterial tick borne co-infections.

There is a very poor understanding of this disease in Ireland and consequentally there is very limited treatment options available, although the HSE did finally come out this year warning of the presence of Lyme Disease here, which is transmitted by a tick bite, so that is a start. I initated treatment with the leading European Lyme and Tick Borne disease clinic, the BCA in Germany last December, but due to length of time left undiagnosed, which has resulted in multiple system problems in my body, coupled with some profoundly mutated genetics, they were not able to deal with me and I am now forced to seek treatment in the USA, as these are the only people who have the knowledge and experience to manage my very complex case. As you can imagine the cost of this medical treatment in America is enormous, and this is why I need your help.

Lyme disease, caused by the spirochetal bacteria Borrelia Burgdorferi, can manifest symptoms in every single body system. It attacks the connective tissues throughout organs systems, the blood, skeletal and muscular systems and the central nervous system, wreaking havoc on the entire functioning of the human body. In the last 10 years alone I have been diagnosed with palindromic rheumatism, fibromyalgia, macrocytic anemia, adrenal insufficency, thyroid hormone resistence, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Myalgia Encephalomyalitis, persistent high grade cervical dysplasia, depression, anxiety disorder, PTSD, carpel tunnel syndrome, TMJ, recurrent sciatica, irritable bowel syndrome and the list goes on and on. I have suffered from chronic lead and multiple metal poisoning as a result of my faulty genetics and the supression of my immune system, due to the massive bacterial load I am carrying. My immune system is shot - I have had shingles flare-ups 8 times since last December alone. I have lost track of the consultants and practicioners I have seen in the last 10 years,  but it is at least 30 across the globe, all of whom acknowledged that there was something going on but never finding the ultimate cause.

In all of this time I have had to keep working to pay my medical bills and have hardly missed a day at work, despite the extreme physical dysfunction I experience on a non-stop basis. I have been granted a year’s sick leave from work, so NOW is my time to try and get on top of this horrible disease. As the condition is not properly recognised here, my health insurance will not cover any of the astronomical costs required to get this disease under control. I need to get well again so that I can use my creativity to help raise awareness of this disease and get back to my studies as a Naturopath & Medical Herbalist so that I can help other sufferers to manage it. I don’t want anyone to ever have to go through what I have and awareness and prevention are the only way forward.

I am a fiercly independent woman and I had dearly hoped to not have to do this type of fundraising, but despite all my best efforts I am still €10,000 short of the €30,000 for the treatment I urgently need, which is set to begin in the USA on the 14th of October.

Please don’t feel obliged to make a donation, but if you feel moved to do so and are in a position to help, no matter how small, every single euro would mean the world to me right now. You can also help by organising your own event for my fundraising campaign, like a sponsered walk/run or golf match or by sharing this link with others who might know me or be in a position to help through your social networking and e-mail systems.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for your support,

Elaine x