Debbie Gibson Details Her Struggle With Lyme Disease
Excerpted from Yahoo Celebrity : (04/18/2014)
Debbie Gibson isn’t just a pop star. For the past year, she’s also been a patient.
Gibson, who is best known for her ’80s songs such as “Only in My Dreams” and “Shake Your Love,” revealed on her blog Wednesday that she’s been diagnosed with Lyme disease. The singer, 43, wrote that she decided to disclose her condition because people were commenting on the weight loss it had caused following performances she gave in Chile earlier this month.
“Amidst the posts online celebrating the wonderful concerts in Santiago, I would come across comments about my weight and appearance,” Gibson wrote. “Some were just plain mean and ignorant. I want to urge you all… NEVER JUDGE… ANYONE! You never know what someone is going through. These comments hurt the people writing them… not me.”
Gibson explained that she began experiencing the symptoms of the tick-borne illness in the spring of 2013. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention receives about 30,00 reports of Lyme disease cases each year in the United States. In cases where it’s caught early, Lyme disease is quickly cured. However, the symptoms can be severe while they last, as Gibson has discovered.
“I found I could not touch sugar, starch, caffeine, certain oils, etc., without having a severe reaction that felt like jolts of electricity running through my body. I felt like a live wire. Talk about ‘Electric Youth!'” she wrote, referring to the name of her hit 1989 album.
Lyme Handbook 