Editor:

I want to thank you very much for printing the article on Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases and raising awareness, since Humboldt County was identified as an endemic region by the Centers for Disease Control and the California Department of Public Health decades ago ("Repellant," April 28). We are very ill-prepared and undereducated about the potential serious outcome of Lyme disease - it is way under the radar. Carol Ann Moorhead did an excellent educational job and was very objective.

I contracted Lyme disease in February of 2005 on West End Road and POW! There went my life as I knew it. I reached late-stage Lyme disease due to mis-diagnosis for a year and a half; if I had only known then what I know now ... .

As soon as I was well enough and able to function again in 2009, I started Humboldt Lyme Awareness Group, an educational and navigational organization and a support group for people who are ill. As a result, on a grassroots level I must of have spoken with more than 250 people with Lyme disease or other tick-borne diseases in just a 40-miles radius from my home in Arcata, and I meet new people all the time. Most of them have been ill for years or decades prior to a diagnosis, because the disease is very hard to diagnose and there is a widespread misconception that the disease is rare. The stories are heartbreaking and truly disheartening.

For information about Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases known in   California visit the California Department Of Public Health, website http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/discond/Pages/TickBorneDiseases.aspx.

Tax deductible donations can be made at Humboldt Area Foundation - Humboldt Lyme Awareness Group/Lyme Disease Fund.

Sylviane Schwarz, Eureka