AN INTERVIEW WITH BRANDILYN COLLINS

This month, Brandilyn Collins has agreed to chat with me about her latest novel, Over the Edge.

Welcome, Brandilyn!

Thanks. Good to be here with you.

First, I just want to say that after reading in your book what a nightmare it is to suffer with Lyme disease, I praise God you have been healed of it.

I was miraculously healed—in 2003. But I did get either a reinfection or a relapse (will probably never know which) in 2009. Not as bad as the first time around—not nearly. But enough to make me have to go back on medication for awhile. Once again, I’m basically well but have to continue watching my diet and paying attention to my body.

Brandilyn, let’s start with you telling us a little about Over the Edge.

This story is another of my trademarked Seatbelt Suspense® novels. That trademark comes with a four-point brand promise: fast-paced, character-driven suspense with myriad twists and an interwoven thread of faith.

First, a little background on Lyme disease. The novel is based on the sad reality in this country that Lyme patients are too often denied adequate medical treatment. There is a national committee of doctors that has issued “guidelines” for how to treat Lyme disease. This committee (comprised of docs who don’t treat the disease on a regular basis, by the way) insists that all the bacteria that cause Lyme (a bacterial spirochete named Borrelia) are eradicated from the body after just 2-4 weeks of antibiotics. And they insist there’s no such thing as Chronic Lyme—Lyme that persists after this period of treatment. Lyme is easy to treat if it’s caught early, but is difficult to kill completely when it’s been allowed for a period of months/years to burrow deep into body tissue. Nevertheless, medical docs across the country follow this committee’s guidelines and refuse to treat beyond four weeks. And insurance companies often refuse to pay for antibiotics beyond that time. The “Lyme literate” doctors—those in the trenches with very sick patients who treat with long-term antibiotics—are putting their medical licenses on the line, because their medical boards can sanction them for the treatment, or even yank their licenses to practice. Only four states in the country so far protect doctors who treat Lyme long term.

Again, all the above is true. Jumping from fact to fiction, in Over the Edge, an embittered man who’s lost his wife to Lyme, due to lack of treatment, decides he’s going to change the system. He goes after my main character, Jannie, who is the wife of the chairman of this national committee. He purposely infects her with Lyme, then states his demand: “You must force your husband to publicly change his stance on Lyme, or I will infect your nine-year-old daughter next.” But Jannie is quickly so sick she can hardly  move or think. And her doctor husband refuses to believe she has Lyme at all. She is left alone to battle her stalker, her husband, the disease, and the medical community at large.

Because you’ve experienced Lyme disease yourself, did you need much research for this book?

I did a lot of research into the science of Lyme—why it’s so hard to treat, what the controversies are and how the two sides of the battling camps emerged, etc. I had to get everything right because this is such a controversy in the medical community. I didn’t want the Chronic-Lyme-denying side to say I don’t even know the facts. Also, after the novel ends I’ve included a rather lengthy Author’s Note that deals with the facts of Lyme and the so-called “Lyme wars” between the two sides. All this information had to be correct. I had four knowledge people vet the entire book, including two Lyme-literate docs.

How difficult was it to re-live on the page the illness, and all the other circumstances related to it?

Yes, this was hard at times. It brought back the nightmare. But that reliving is what makes the character of Jannie so believable as she endures the illness.

After you were reinfected in 2009, what went through your mind about your previous healing? Did it cross your mind that maybe it didn’t “take?”

I never thought the first healing didn’t “take.” It did. I went from crippling around to completely well in one hour’s time. There’s no way to deny what happened to me. (You can read the story of my healing on my web site.)

When I got sick again I was stunned. I couldn’t understand what God was doing. And I had a very hard talk with him. “Aren’t you worried about your reputation? Naysayers will say you never healed me. My healing was so public, and so many people know about it. I was even on national TV! Your reputation’s going to take a real hit here.”

Well, first, God assured me that he’d done just fine with his reputation going back to when he brought the Israelites out of Egypt, so chill out, Brandilyn. Second, as time passed I began to see what he had in mind this second time around. He had more things to teach me spiritually. And in truth, although the original idea for Over the Edge came to me during my first illness, if I hadn’t gotten sick again and revisited the world of Lyme, I never would have written the book.

In a previous interview, you stated that you never knew you were bitten by a tick, as many Lyme sufferers don’t. This may be an “icky” question, but if a tick latches onto a human or animal body, and burrows in, what happens to it from there?

The tick will embed for around 3-5 days. Keep in mind that nymph stage deer ticks are the size of a head of a pin, so they’re very hard to spot. After about 12-24 hours the tick starts to transmit the Borrelia. These spirochetes are stored in the tick’s mid gut. So it takes awhile for the person’s blood to be drawn into the tick, pick up these spirochetes, and then allow them to flow back out into the person’s body. If you discover a tick and you know it hasn’t been  embedded too long, you can be more confident that it hasn’t transmitted Lyme, even if it’s infected.

How do you imagine it would happen, and what elements do you think would have to fall into place, for a reversal of the Center for Disease Control’s criteria?

Yes, the question. It’s very hard to understand why the CDC and the IDSA committee, which wrote the guidelines, so strongly stick to their guns. (IDSA=Infectious Diseases Society of America.) IDSA committee members state publicly that there is no evidence that Borrelia remain in the body after four weeks of treatment. Yet there are numerous scientific studies that have been presented to the committee that show they do. (I mention one in my Author’s Note, and in fact it’s woven into the Over the Edge story.) The committee’s actual wording in their guidelines is that there’s “no convincing biologic evidence.” Note the disclaimer word “convincing.” There is evidence. They just choose not to find it convincing for one reason or another.

Problem is, the longer this continues, the longer they dig in, the more patients who go untreated and undiagnosed. Some of these patients have died. So if these docs ever were to change their opinion—how liable might they be for the suffering of thousands of patients? I can’t look into these doctors’ minds. But I do suspect they’ve thought of this. Whatever the reason, the more their mindset is against chronic Lyme, the more they end up designing research with biased premises. And of course, this “research” proves that premise. This is not good science.

I go into this in more depth in my Author’s Note. Briefly, what is needed is more effective testing, as right now the standardized criteria for reading the tests result in far too many false negatives. Second, better education of the disease among doctors in general. Too many continue to operate under disproved and arcane myths such as “There’s no Lyme in this state” (the CDC itself has found Lyme in all 50 states), and “A negative test means you don’t have Lyme, even if your symptoms are screaming that you do” (again, the CDC states that Lyme is a clinical diagnosis, meaning doctors must assess the overall presentation of the patient).

Brandilyn, please tell readers where they can find more information about Lyme, you, Over the Edge, and other books you’ve authored.

Please visit my web site. There you can see the trailer for Over the Edge, read the prologue, etc. You can also read the opening scenes from all my books. And I have a Lyme disease page that gives more information, such as Lyme symptoms, and lists organizations who can help people find a Lyme literate doctor, etc.

Thanks so much for taking the time from your busy schedule to chat with me and my visitors. It was such a blessing!

Thanks, Deb. I’ve been on book tour for Over the Edge in May and in June, and I’ve received a lot of feedback about the book. It’s wonderful to see that people love the story and are learning about Lyme. I do think the book will make a difference in the lives of people. Those who fight Lyme feel validated by the story and want to give the book to others as a way to say, “See, this is what I’m experiencing!” Those who don’t know much about Lyme walk away from the book much smarter about the disease, and more likely to recognize possible symptoms.

If you’d like to win a copy of Over the Edge, use the Contact page, and type “drawing” in the comments box. The deadline to enter is July 24th.

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