Саксофонист из Стратфорда делится историей борьбы с болезнью Лайма и призывает к терпению в лечении

Stratford saxophonist Matt Telfer shares his story of battling Lyme disease and reassures others you can still do the things you love A Stratford saxophonist is raising awareness of Lyme disease – an illness which has had a devastating impact on his life and music career. Back in 2012, Matt Telfer was making a name for himself on the jazz scene. A self-taught musician, he was playing gigs across the country and had been endorsed by a Japanese saxophone company which gave him four of their instruments to play. Things were going from strength to strength for Matt, who has moved back to his native Stratford from London. However, the same year his health declined and this turned into a struggle which resulted in Matt, 51, being diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2019. “My health had been slowly declining, but I’d ignored it,” he told the Herald. “There was one specific day, it was in October 2012, and I was due to go to Paris to meet a sponsor and play a gig in the evening,” “I got to my hotel room in Paris and I just collapsed – I felt absolutely dreadful. I ended up sleeping for a little bit, then meeting my sponsors. I got out of the gig I had in the evening, then I came back to London. “That was the very day everything changed.” A bacterial infection, Lyme disease is commonly spread through ticks. Matt said the only interaction he has had with a tick was when his cat brought one into the house in 2011. He squashed it between his fingers and says it’s probable he had a cut on his finger which has led to his diagnosis and illness. The symptoms were minor at first and started off with Matt’s gym sessions getting shorter. He also found that after a gig and a few drinks he would feel dreadful the following morning, not something he had experienced before. During frequent trips to the doctors between 2012 and 2017, Matt was told that what he was experiencing was possibly chronic fatigue. “Soon after that collapse in Paris, I was getting really bad anxiety for no reason. “They put me on some anti-anxiety medication, benzodiazepine, which really helped the anxiety. “However, my symptoms got worse. I started getting tremors, like you would get with Parkinson’s. I had this thing called derealization and depersonalisation, like you’re watching a film and nothing feels real.” In 2017, Matt started to see a new doctor who was left concerned when he told her he’d been on the medication for several years and said that he shouldn’t have been on this for more than a couple of weeks. Matt was prescribed Valium to help get him off benzodiazepine, and two years later he was finally off the drug. Even after this, however, he knew something still wasn’t right. “The only reason I knew about Lyme disease was because I read a book by a woman who is into natural healing, and she talked about how she started to notice that she couldn’t do things and her energy was deteriorating – this turned out to be Lyme disease and this sounded familiar.” Seven years after initially falling ill, Matt took a test and a German clinic confirmed that he had Lyme disease. Outlining some of the symptoms to look out for, Matt said: “There’s the fatigue, but you can manage that. “You get all these little symptoms, like it gets in your nervous system. If I took a shower, I’d come out and I’d feel absolutely dreadful and my vision would be off. “I could also only eat about four types of food because if I ate any strange food or spiced food, these neurological symptoms would come on that cause fuzzy thinking. “You get rashes on your skin, joint pain, symptoms of arthritis and this is the problem with Lyme disease – these are the symptoms I had, but another person with the disease can have completely different symptoms which is why it’s misdiagnosed as chronic fatigue and ME a lot.” Matt was hindered significantly, and said he has missed lots of opportunities because of the disease. The treatment Matt receives is not on the NHS. It includes hyperbaric oxygen therapy, targeted Lyme and co-infection treatments (antimicrobials and herbal protocols) and IV vitamin therapy. “It was such a slow improvement that it’s difficult to say when I was fixed. I gradually started doing more and more gigs,” said Matt. “I think lockdown personally was a blessing because I got to stay at home and recover from Lyme disease. “The last gig I did was last October at the London Jazz Festival and when I did that, my health was on the way down again – that gig pretty much finished me off. “Since then, I’ve been recovering and in the last six weeks I’ve started to feel almost back to normal. “I did a gig recently, just something local and small, where I didn’t have to blow for too long.” Matt had some words of advice for others in his position: “Be patient, give your body the time and space it needs to recover and you can get back into doing what you love. “There’s a lot of people out there with Lyme and it’s one of these things where there’s no one thing that will fix it. “If you’re prepared for the fact it’s going to take you potentially a couple of years to recover and to stick to a protocol, there’s no reason why you can’t fully recover.” Matt is also keen to share his story as some of the treatments for Lyme disease are used in treating long covid. “They’re holistic treatments, which people frown upon, but to be honest with you, the only reason I’m up and walking and talking is because I took on these treatments,” he said. Matt has launched a fundraiser to help cover the costs of his treatment, you can donate at https://shorturl.at/bkX5h.