60-year-old father of two started having memory problems due to Lyme disease –

A “away from home” father of two died of memory problems caused by Lyme disease that made it hard to remember that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease to the alarm code.

Russell Bell, 65, from Raleigh, North Carolina, was tested for tick-borne illness in 2016 after he started experiencing mood swings, but the swabs came back negative.

The computer scientist later said he had Alzheimer’s after doctors discovered he could no longer do the mathematical equations for a six-year-old boy.

Nine months later, as his condition deteriorated “rapidly”, his wife, Nicole, decided to get him tested further, after his wife suggested that her newly diagnosed brother had Lyme disease.

This time the tests came back positive and Bell was immediately switched to a course of antibiotics to relieve her symptoms.

But the initial points were bad. The family (pictured on Nicole and Russell’s wedding day) struggled for nine months as their symptoms worsened “rapidly.”

Antibiotics helped ease her symptoms, but after 18 months of treatment she kept coming back and her mental decline continued.

His wife took him to a residential facility in 2019, and after not seeing his family for six months, he died there in January after the COVID pandemic left him “humpbacked” and “vulnerable.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that about 30,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with Lyme disease each year.

Most infections are easily treatable with antibiotics if detected early. But if treated in the later stages, the disease can be difficult to cure as inflammation in the immune system causes symptoms to persist.

Lyme disease is usually transmitted when bitten by a deer tick, which is common in tall grass and woodlands.

It is diagnosed using a blood test that looks for antibodies to the bacteria.

However, if these are done within the first three weeks of infection, they may miss the disease because antibody levels are too low to detect. A study in Clinical Microbiological Assessments shows that up to 60 percent of cases are lost during this period.

Infected individuals initially develop fever and body aches within three to thirty days after the bite.

A bull’s-eye-shaped rash (medically called erythema) may appear around the bite site, which is usually red but rarely hot or painful.

Infections can cause severe headaches, falling on one side of the face, and dizziness if left untreated.

In some cases, they can cause inflammation in the brain and spinal cord, leading to behavior and memory problems.

Bell’s wife wrote for TODAY that her husband did not have symptoms of the rash, which occurs in about 80 percent of cases.

But in 2016 she said that Lyme disease was one of her first thoughts on what her husband’s illness might be.

She said: “Because Russ is very outdoorsy and I knew he had ticks on him over the years, actually Lyme disease was one of the first things that came to my mind when I started seeing signs of my husband’s cognitive decline. I started researching.”

Describing her early symptoms, where she had trouble remembering codes she had known for years, “My husband, Russ, who picks up the kids from school every day, came home and couldn’t turn off the alarm. Loud. †

“I came home later that day and everything was fine.

“But I noticed that Russ was asking repetitive questions. I forgot when the kids were supposed to be picked up. And he couldn’t remember the alarm code we’ve been using for years,” he said.

After brain examinations, doctors were convinced that he had suffered a stroke or had Alzheimer’s disease, which appeared at age 65.

An MRI ruled out stroke, leading to a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Bell later “quickly” refused, and treatments failed to slow him down.

After being rediagnosed with Lyme disease, his wife said antibiotics “would help, and then Russ would be gone.”

“Some of the more familiar Lyme symptoms emerged: joint pain, swollen knees. But he continued to deteriorate cognitively.

When Bell was first transferred to the health facility, he was described as “okay” because his wife came to visit him every day.

Bell was diagnosed with Lyme disease when his wife wanted to retest him. She tested positive and was given antibiotics that improved her condition. But his mental breakdown continued and eventually led to his wife taking him home.

Bell died in January after being separated from his wife and family for six months due to the COVID pandemic. “I lost my wife, the person I contacted every day,” Nicole said of her loss.

But when the Covid pandemic hit, they were separated for six months and did not see each other again until after an attack.

“It was September 2020,” his wife said. “He bent down. The man who was once very attractive, the life of the party was empty.

“People asked me if I thought they knew me. I don’t think so. Russ died in January 2022.

Regarding his loss, he said, “I lost my wife, the person I contacted every day.”

Nicole wrote a book about the experience called “What’s Hidden in the Woods,” which was published last October to mark Bell’s 65th birthday.