Iconic singer Joni Mitchell was diagnosed with Morgellons. ... she's awake and in good spirts

[mike_c]

124. thank you....

I'll take a look. I skimmed the abstracts and figures of the first couple of papers and they seem to have a healthy dose of confirmation bias, but I'll read them more closely when I get a chance. Many of the micrographs are depressingly familiar-- dried crusty scabs with some clothing fibers embedded, the sorts of images in which Morgellon's sufferers often imagine parasite morphology and such.

At least the first couple of papers acknowledge that mainstream clinicians and scientists dispute any somatic origin for Morgellons, but they don't really make any case for spirochete causation other than association, i.e. some of the folks presenting with Morgellons also tested positive for Borrelia. Remember too, that other clinical studies have found strong association between Morgellons incidence and patients' general predisposition to doubt their health and a strong conviction that they are "sick." Borrelia infection would likely push such patients further into their delusions if they do suffer from delusional parasitosis as well.

A Morgellon's patient once told me that she was deliberately infected (or perhaps allowed to be infected) by her employer-- a company that had something to do with cell phone equipment-- which either put big, invisible blob-like creatures in cell phone tower machine spaces or simply permitted them to remain there. She had a very specific tale. She could describe the invisible creatures in detail-- they usually kept to the ceiling corners, if I recall, and she sometimes saw evidence of them in her home, as well. With patients like that, it's really hard to know where the somatic malady ends and the psychosomatic one begins. Like the other Morgellans patients I've consulted, she showed me bags and bags of fibers and many pieces of crusty, dried scabs and such. She brought me dirt and other sweepings from her house, which I examined. I did find evidence of home flea infestation in her case-- I suspect her pets suffered as much as she did. But she clearly suffered from delusions. Not only the invisible creatures, but she would point to random flotsom in her samples and insist that they were moving, or that she could see their morphology.