Only my second post on the forum as I have been battling a nasty ailment which has finally been diagnosed as Lyme. Not surprising considering how much time I spend in VT, NH, and ME, but despite taking all precautions I still managed to be bitten. The frustrating thing is that I never saw the tick attached, nor developed the characteristic bullseye rash. As I have now found out, the rash is only developed in 30% of cases. So, three to six months of aggressive antibiotic treatment and the cancellation of two wonderful landscape trips this fall 😡
As a result I have not spent much time with the S2 I acquired in July, only adding bits here and there. Recently bought the RRS dedicated L-plate and Leica shutter release cable, and in vertical orientation, there is not enough clearance between the plate and the ball head to accommodate the shutter release cable. Looks as if a spacer of ~ 2.5 inches would be required. Concerned with stability with this additional height. Wondering how other folks are handling this? Worse case scenario, I guess I could just flop the ball 90-degrees, but then why use an L-plate!
Cheers,
JeffHi Jeff:
Very sorry to hear of your problem but you are forunate to have started treatment. THe son of a friend of mine waited too late and has really suffeed.
I use the RRS L plate and don’t have any problems with the remote release so long as I position the camera at one end of the clamp. A extension spacer would be another solution – Kirk makes one
Phil
Thanks Phil. I tried that but with the Arca Swiss Z1 I can only clamp a portion of the plate before the cable becomes an impediment. I’ll check out Kirk’s solution. RRS does have spacers, but they are only 1.25 inches, which means I would have to stack spacers. A nuisance for sure, and at that point any extra stability gained from using an L-plate above the centre of gravity is diminished.
Sorry to hear about your friends son. Has he been to see a “Lyme Literate” MD? I have found that their treatments are the most aggressive, and rightfully so. This can be a crippling ailment, especially when it invades the neurological system. The regular “run of the mill” GP just does not know how to treat this disease properly. The usual “30 days of doxycycline” only applies if you detect the rash within two weeks of being bitten. Past that, and you have dissemination into tissue, including brain and sinovial fluid. At this point, treatment becomes much more complex. I should also mention, that in up to 40% of cases, these ticks carry co-infections from Babesia and Bartonella, so it is not just the Borellia that needs to be treated. There has also been a recent body of research by the CDC that indicates that Borellia can exist in three forms: spirochete, cyst, and bio-film. No single antibiotic can eliminate all three. Needless to say, the complexity of the treatment needs to be aligned for both co-infection and all mutagenic forms of Borellia.
I sent your E-mail on to my friend. Thanks for the info- ir sounds like you are wll informed.
The vertical plate on my RRS bracket is only about 1 inch in length and I can clamp along the entire length but the bracket is way off-set from the center of the clamp. It seems stable.
Thanks Phil.
Your friend can reach me at [email]jeff.plomley@sympatico.ca[/email]
I’d be happy to pass along any information I can. Having spent almost twenty years in pharmaceutical research, I have studied many different disease states so am quite familiar with a variety of pathogens. This one is particularly nasty because it is difficult to diagnosis since it overlaps with so many other neurological ailments such as MS, ALS etc. For this reason, it has been coined “the great neurological mimicker”. This is the major cause for delayed diagnosis (i.e. all other ailments must first be eliminated). Not to mention there is no test for Lyme with an accuracy greater than 30%. Consequently, there is a high probability of false negatives, which again results in delayed treatment. The CDC really needs to ramp up research on Lyme before it gets any worse. There are 200,000 cases reported in the USA each year, but this number is likely low by a factor of 10 since there are no reliable tests, so that means a lot of people left wondering what the hell is wrong with them! All very scary stuff.
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