LymeBlog

All she lost: My sister's battle with Lyme disease
MSNBBC

By John Baiata, NBC News producer

After a decade of unbearable side effects, she decided to end her life

The phone had not even finished its first ring before my wife Anna snatched it from its cradle. Concern was etched in her face as she handed me the receiver: “It’s the police. It’s about Sue.” My stomach dropped. My older sister had disappeared the day before and my family feared for her safety. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” the police lieutenant said in an even voice, “but we found your sister dead this afternoon. We have reason to believe it was a suicide. We’re here with your mother now.”

I fought the urge to scream as my mind went in a million directions. “Do not leave my mother by herself,” I urged the lieutenant over the phone. “I’ll be there in a little more than an hour.”

I lurched outside and clung tightly to the deck railing, while everything else seemed to spin violently around me. Anna grabbed me with both hands. “What happened?!” “She really did it this time,“ I said. “She killed herself.”

Sue Baiata, shown dancing with her brother, John, at his 2001 wedding, developed advanced Lyme disease in the years after being bitten by a tick. One of the side effects she experienced was hyperacusis, a sensitivity to sound so severe that she tried to find a doctor willing to surgically deafen her.

Photo: Courtesy of the Baiata family

Sue Baiata, shown dancing with her brother, John, at his 2001 wedding, developed advanced Lyme disease in the years after being bitten by a tick. One of the side effects she experienced was hyperacusis, a sensitivity to sound so severe that she tried to find a doctor willing to surgically deafen her.

John Baiata could always count on his sister Sue to offer a listening ear when he needed to talk — and to introduce him to the latest music. Pictured in this family photo from the 1970s is Sue, far right, John, next to her, their sister Dawn, far left, and mother, Patricia.

Photo: Courtesy of the Baiata family

John Baiata could always count on his sister Sue to offer a listening ear when he needed to talk — and to introduce him to the latest music. Pictured in this family photo from the 1970s is Sue, far right, John, next to her, their sister Dawn, far left, and mother, Patricia.

Photo: Courtesy of the Baiata family

Sue Baiata in the late 1990s at a beach on Long Island, one of her favorite places. In the decade or so before Sue took her own life at age 46 on August 21, 2005, my sister Dawn, my mother and I had become all too familiar with advanced Lyme disease, which had slowly, inexorably diminished Sue’s life. Sometime in the mid 1990s, my sister contracted Lyme disease, likely through being bitten by a deer tick or black-legged tick. The bacterium that had introduced itself to Sue’s bloodstream went undetected, and then was misdiagnosed for the better part of two years. Identified early, a short course of oral antibiotics will cure the majority of cases of Lyme disease — more than 27,000 cases were reported in the U.S. in 2007 — and wipe out the typical symptoms of headaches, fatigue and a circular rash near the area of the bite. But left untreated, the disease can affect the heart and nervous system, causing joint pain. Sue faced a parade of symptoms including migraines, severe pain her neck and major joints and staggering exhaustion.
Each one narrowed the prism through which she lived her life. Sue had to leave her job as a facilities manager to go on disability, and lived with my mother in the Long Island home where we were raised. On her good days, she would spend hours in the gardens she had lovingly cultivated in the expanse of the backyard. More than likely it was there too where the tick which bore the disease that would seal her fate attached itself to her.
On her bad days, she would stay in bed with the shades drawn, cuddled with the dog she loved unconditionally, her beloved Chihuahua, Katie. She would emerge only briefly to have some tea and a bite to eat, and a few words with our mom. Still, she had accepted what her life had become. On those good days she could still fill the room with laughter. She would mine the late-night comedians for material but ...

Table of Contents