Raboisai... I am posting this article because of a funeral that took place last week in Beit Shemesh! A 34 year-old young man from Monsey died after a long illness.
The family went from one doctor to another and no one could diagnose his illness except that all doctors agreed that he was deteriorating at a rapid rate.
Finally he was diagnosed with Lyme disease, and before they started treatment, Zev Saloff died at the young age of 34!
If anyone in your family is not well, first check for Lyme disease!
Here is a heartbreaking post from his mother:
For those of you who have not heard, my youngest son Nathaniel Zev (Zevy) passed away last Shabbos. We brought him for burial to Israel, and we are sitting shiva in Ramat Beit Shemesh until Monday morning (Israel time). He has been suffering from long term, chronic neurological Lyme disease, which had not been discovered until recent testing, but he passed away before treatment could begin. We are struggling with this loss. Be aware and vigilant that such vector borne infections can imitate and/or cause serious autoimmune diseases such as ALS, Lupus, MS, fibromyalgia, et al. Please do deeds of goodness and kindness, and learn Torah in the merit of the spiritual elevation of נתנאל זאב בן ר׳ בן ציון
Natanel Zev ben Ben-Tzion. 💔😓😞Gd has a plan
It was 2016 when I got a call at work. It was the house alarm company. My husband, Russ, who picked up the kids from school each day, had arrived home and wasn’t able to turn the blaring alarm off.
I got home later that day and everything was fine. But I noticed Russ asking repetitive questions. Forgetting what time to pick up the kids. And he couldn’t remember the alarm code — the same one we had used for years.
In the time leading up to the alarm company incident, things between Russ and me had not been good. He was moody and irritable. He was angry. I thought we were headed toward divorce. But now I know those were the very first signs of tick-borne illness.
Because Russ was very outdoorsy, and because I knew he had ticks on him over the years, Lyme disease was actually one of the first things that came to mind when I started looking into the symptoms of my husband’s cognitive decline. The thing was, though, that Russ had never had a fever or a rash associated with ticks that we knew of, and when tested with the standard Lyme screener had come up negative.
We also got bloodwork from an integrative medicine doctor to take a deeper look at what was happening with Russ. It showed nothing out of the ordinary. Tick-borne illnesses, like Lyme, fell off my radar. Russ went to a neurologist for cognitive testing and his decline was far worse than I even suspected. He wasn’t able to do simple math patterns that my 6-year-old could easily do at the time. He was a computer scientist and electrical engineer. I was flabbergasted. The neurologist said he either had a stroke event or Alzheimer’s.
