Lyme disease may well have chosen the wrong opponents when it took on the Caudwell family, writes Christopher Jackson
When Phones4U billionaire John Caudwell experienced the diagnosis of his family with Lyme disease, it provided an explanation for the heart-breaking illness of his eldest son Rufus. Now he and his daughter Rebekah Caudwell are focused on beating this little-understood disease.
John Caudwell
This engulfed me. One by one, 11 members of my family were diagnosed with Lyme. Nobody knew anything about it – not the public, and not the medical profession. I had to educate them. Because of my wealth status I was able to make a massive noise about it: it saturated society.
Rebekah Caudwell
When Dad started becoming vocal about Lyme disease, it was amazing watching what he went through. People throughout the world started contacting him: he would sit up until 4am reading every message. He was overwhelmed with grief. He was getting messages of the most traumatic kind from people failed by the system.
John
If I produced my Facebook stories from all those thousands of people who’d written to me and put it into a book and told the way in which doctors had insulted them and told them they were hypochondriacs, it would go down as one of the biggest health scandals there’s ever been. I can’t very easily excuse that.
I know there’s a way of getting my son well. He spends his life being tortured – every day is a new day of torture: panic attacks, air hunger which tortures him physically as well as mentally and and makes him wish at times he could die. Whatever we’re doing, we’re not doing enough.
Read the rest of the interview at Spear’s.com
Related Posts
BLOG – My view on the development of a Lyme disease vaccine
Lyme disease is one of the most serious public health threats that we face today. It is far more prevalent than people realise and is causing many different debilitating conditions,…
BLOG – This blog provides me with a platform to voice my true opinions.
2 Comments
We all have our own views on how we want the future to look and I count myself privileged to be in a position of being able to contribute towards,…
Daily Mirror – Mobile phones billionaire John Caudwell pledges £9million to fund centre for autism
The Phones 4 U businessman says there is a desperate need for more research and resources to help families with children with autism as more and more people are being…
You must be logged in to post a comment.