Here is Mark’s description from a 2004 web posting of what he came to refer to as his “plague”:

In June 2001 I came down with a mysterious illness that quickly landed me in the hospital. Before too long, I could barely walk nor readily take a pee. Sharp pains ran up and down both legs and there was a spreading lack of sensation from the waist down accompanied by extremely sensitive, constantly painful feet.

After a myriad tests and proddings by all sorts of interns, residents, and specialists, it was determined that I was in fact quite sick and getting worse. Based on a recent camping trip to Cape Cod and a strange red spot in my groin area (already disappeared from sight) Lyme disease was suspected. All the other testing and probing had eliminated a large number of nasty possibilities, but the tests for Lyme revealed nothing.

Nevertheless, it was decided that, since I was continuing to get worse, we should assume a bacterial origin and start antibiotics, Ceftriaxone in this case. Well, within a day or so, my symptoms showed a small improvement. Diagnostic victory was declared. After the installation of a catheter in my arm, I was sent home for a month of intravenous treatment. Not to drag this on, by August, I was going to the office for a couple of hours a day. By New Year’s day I had started to walk on a treadmill again. Today, I am continuing to recover. L’Hermite’s Sign is almost completely gone and the chronic pains in my feet amazingly still improve. My regular physician, Stanley Sagov, always introduces me to his student doctors as, “an interesting case”, but Edward Wolpow, my neurologist has sent me on my way with the parting words, “Try not to get neurotic about this, maybe you will continue to heal, but maybe you won’t”.

Mark continues to suffer from peripheral neuropathy in his feet and up the calfs. Otherwise no other obvious sequelae.

BTW: (from Wikipedia)