Lyme disease: Tick bite in India reduces Adelaide man Matthew Mason to bed-bound patient

A man who fell ill after a mission trip to India nearly a decade ago is still in the midst of a monumental health battle, only managing to move in 15-minute blocks before exhausting himself.

Matthew Mason, 37, from Athelstone, east Adelaide, contracted Lyme disease when he was bitten by a tick carrying the bacterium borrelia burgdorferi in December 2013 in a remote part of India.

The debilitating disease has left him unable to participate in activities he used to enjoy, such as attending church, working, and creating videos for his YouTube channel.

Even the simple act of walking has become a difficult task.

Mason can only spend very little time each day looking at electronic screens, reading, or listening to audio, and can only manage a few 15-minute blocks of activity at a time.

She also has to live with her parents as she is unable to work or live her life independently.

“If I start to overdo the activities, I feel a tightness in my stomach, I can start to sweat and start to feel very weak,” he told the outlet. Adelaide Advertiser.

Mason said that if you try hard, you can set it back for days.

“It’s just this really frustrating process of trying to do all the right things, eat all the right things, get my mind in the right place,” she said.

Mason showed no symptoms of the disease until 2015, more than a year after he was bitten.

He said he crashed in 2015, but was not officially diagnosed with Lyme disease until early 2019.

Between 2015 and the time of diagnosis, Mr Mason said he saw a number of doctors in Adelaide, but they were unable to discover the root cause of his symptoms.

He said he was even prescribed antidepressants at one point, despite knowing he did not suffer from anxiety or depression.

Mattew Mason contracted Lyme disease when he was bitten by a tick carrying borrelia burgdorferi bacteria (file image of disease-carrying tick pictured)

“For doctors it was a mysterious disease, so it was very frustrating to go from doctor to doctor and not really get any answers,” he said.

By the time doctors in Sydney finally diagnosed Mr Mason, the disease had infected his cells, rendering any antibiotics useless.

Lyme disease can be treated if it is discovered and diagnosed within the first six months of infection.

After experiencing another setback to his health, a close friend of Mr. Mason installed a GoFundMe to help pay for expensive treatment.

Friend Caleb Corneloup said Mr Mason had been “severely isolated with very limited social interaction”.

‘[He has] He suffered the loss of many things including his job, his finances, his fiancé left him at an all time low,” Corneloup wrote on the GoFundMe page.

Mr. Mason can only spend very little time each day looking at electronic screens, reading, or listening to audio, and can only manage a few 15-minute blocks of activity at a time.

In a recent fundraising update on January 16, Mr Corneloup said his friend had an appointment at a specialist clinic where he would start treatment “immediately”.

“Matt is so grateful to all of you,” he wrote.

Lyme disease is transmitted after the bite of certain types of ticks if they have been infected with a particular borrelia bacterium, and they are commonly found in parts of Asia, Europe, and North America.

Related tick bites occur in Australia, but have not been shown to be infected with the Borrelia bacterium of Lyme disease.

Most cases of Lyme disease can be successfully treated with a few weeks of antibiotics, such as doxycycline, which are widely available in Australia.

If left untreated, Lyme disease can spread through the bloodstream, causing infection in the brain, heart, joint pain, and long-term neurological symptoms.