Penny Lesavoy felt so sick for so long last year that she
imagined she had been poisoned or had multiple sclerosis, cancer
or some weird fatal disease. Her family and friends thought the
29-year-old Allentown woman was crazy. But after five months of
medical tests and false diagnoses, physicians pinpointed the
cause of Lesavoy's flu symptoms, fatigue and painful joints: a
mysterious, seldom-fatal illness called Lyme disease. Lyme
disease is a bacterial infection that can cause serious damage
to the nerves, joints and heart. It is caused by a deer tick, a
tiny brown blood-sucking member of the spider family (arachnid).
Smaller than a dog tick, the deer tick gets its name from its
favorite host - the white-tailed deer - but it can be found on
all types of animals including dogs, cats and birds. First
reported in Europe in the early 1900s and named after the town
of Lyme, Conn., where a cluster of 50 children came down with a
mysterious arthritic condition in 1975, Lyme disease is reported
most often in the Nort