You've seen her delivering weather on the weekends. Showing off her goofy skills from 7-9 AM and her more serious side during the 10 PM newscast.
But you may not know that Brooke Landau is often in pain when on camera. She still suffers debilitating headaches as a result of her lyme disease condition -- the fastest growing infectious disease in the country.
Brooke had never heard of lyme disease -- and never even thought about broadcasting -- fourteen years ago. But, all of a sudden, her life changed when she least expected it.
"I was one year out of college, climbing the corporate latter, had a great job when all of a sudden I went to bed absolutely fine one night and woke up paralyzed from the waste down and couldn't move my head from the neck up and had no idea what happened to me," she said.
Brooke grew up in Connecticut and was often bit by ticks. She hadn't pulled a tick off of her body in a year when all of a sudden, her attack happened. "You get ticks, you pull them off, you don't necessarily think anything of it. So I took it off and was perfectly fine for a year and all of a sudden just woke up that morning unable to move and had no idea why."
Brooke's case was more severe than most. She said most people with lyme can get flu-like symptoms or other indications they are sick. If they are treated in time, with the right antibiotics, they can feel fine within a few weeks.
But Brooke didn't notice any signs of lyme before her night of paralysis. In fact, lyme isn't that easy to spot. "Its actually called the Great Pretender, because it mimics so many other diseases" she said.
"If you don't get it right away, it's incredibly difficult to diagnose. If they can't diagnose you, they can't treat you. The test is inaccurate 60 percent of the time, so for 7.5 years, I couldn't get a positive blood test."
Frustrated by continually feeling sick, doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. Brooke said the disease didn't affect her appearance much and some physicians challenged the legitimacy of her complaints. Almost no one thought it was lyme.
"They would tell me that I was crazy and it was all in my head and they would send me to psychiatrists and unfortunately, that's very common. Hundreds of thousands of people are told that."
She had three different spinal taps in three years. She was diagnosed with everything from MS to Lupis. Doctors prescribed more than 40 pills for her to take each day. Over the years, she calculated that she took 926,000 pills.
"After a while you don't know if you are sick because of a disease, or are you sick because you are over-medicated" she said.
Among the conditions she endured: "I lost hearing in my left ear, lost my sight, lost my short term memory, I developed spinal meningitis, gallstones, colitis, heart arhythmia, palpitations, my hair started falling out, I lost weight, I lost a quarter of my body weight and the list just goes on and on."
At her lowest point, she almost lost hope. "I remember lying on the gurney, going into the operating room and saying to my mother, I would be OK if I just didn't wake up this time."
Eventually, one doctor did believe her. In fact, he made her his research project. He had a tube pump medicine straight into her heart. She also went in and out of a hyperbaric chamber for 30 days.
On the 30th day, she felt dramatically better. She wasn't cured of the disease--although she still had never officially tested positive for it.
Because Brooke and thousands others never tested positive for the disease, her doctor ended up having his license suspended.
According to Brooke, that's not uncommon in lyme. Because the lyme test is inaccurate 60 percent of the time, insurance companies can charge that doctors are over-prescribing medication.
"The accusation is doctors are over-treating these diseases with all these antibiotics, and we are actually putting patients at risk" said Dr. Therese Yang of Santee.
Yang runs the only lyme clinic in San Diego and is one of California's leading lyme specialists. She believes that if antibiotics are used to treat acne, they should be allowed with lyme.
Yang runs Dr. Yang's Family care and works for free in order to provide better service. Without much support from insurance companies, Yang and her patients often have to buy medication out of pocket.
"You can get resourceful. Sometimes we'll try a less expensive drug that might not be as successful but if it works, that's great" she said.
Yang said lyme is not just an East Coast problem. "The biggest misconception that there is no lyme in California and if you have lyme you got it somewhere else. We definitely have people who have never left California, that have never left San Diego, and they have CDC positive lyme."
She said you need to be careful if you are ever bitten by a tick.
A tick "actually cuts the skin and holds on, and then he actually spits his saliva into you to numb the area and turn your immune system off...You need a tweezer, you get in and grab the whole tick, especially the head." She said leaving the head inside the body could actually make the infection worse.
She said if you are bitten, "and if you develop a rash or any symptoms, you need to go see a doctor."
Her crowded office in Santee currently has a waiting list of 300 people. She needs financial support to keep it going.
Yang volunteers her time because she so believes in the cause. "It's very complex, it's hard to keep up with, and there is a huge political battle going on. I don't blame anyone who doesn't want to get involved with that, but they can't be like an ostrich, bury your head in the sand and hope the ostrich goes away."
For her, "the thing that keeps me going is the number of people who do get better."
Brooke is one of them. Tests show lyme is now gone from her system, although those tests are not reliable. She is feeling better now, and serves as a national spokesperson for lyme.
She receives thousands of emails every year from other survivors. Her message to them is simple.
No matter what the disease is or hardship, you need to stop asking why and start answering what? You need to stop asking 'why me? Why did it happen to me? Because it did. You have to start answering what I am going to do about this now that it has happened to me."
To donate to Dr. Yang, you can send a check to:
Dr. Yang's Family Care
10201 Mission Gorge Rd., Suite A
Santee, CA 92071
Or call 1-619-596-4963
You can also visit their website, http://dyfc.org.
