Buck Benoist
"He always checked himself and wore white socks," in order to spot any ticks.
"I checked him too," she adds. But then a couple years ago Buck started complaining that he
would get tired easily. "He would go out in the yard and get tired from nothing,"
Hailing from South Dakota and a member of the Lakota Indian Tribe, Buck ended up in Exeter, RI.
A story that started out in happiness for two people who found a late-in-life relationship
ended last August in tragedy, caused by a tick carrying a disease. His widow, Carla Neubert
Benoist, still breaks down when she describes her husband's ordeal.
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Rudi Hempe
"I stood there in the corridor holding my magnetic employee card and suddenly I didn't know
where I was."
Thus began Rudi Hempe's story involving Lyme disease, a story that took months to come to
its conclusion. Or at least he hopes it is concluded.
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Bill Thornton
"I was so sick, I asked God to take me."
A tiny deer tick latched onto Bill's body one day in 1999 and his life has never been the same-and, he fears, it will not get any better.
That deer tick, which he never saw, infected Bill with a parasite called Babesia microti. The parasite got into his red blood cells but it was a long time before he or any of his doctors found out about it.
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Kate Moran
Her knee swelled up, she had some memory problems, "I just wasn't myself."
Kate Moran loves to run and so in 2004 when she was in training for an 18K race, she was
not all that surprised when her left knee started to swell. After all, running can have its
consequences.
Her doctor suspected Lyme disease and a test confirmed that with excessively high numbers.
In fact she also had babesiosis, another disease that is transmitted by ticks.
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Brian Follett
"One night I realized I could not see my dinner on a plate so well. It was like hitting a brick wall. It all came very fast, like a storm."
Brian Follett seems to be a very typical 20-year-old. Brian is typical in most ways except one-he is virtually blind.
He wasn't born that way. His blindness did not hit him until 1998 when he was in the sixth grade.
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