Dave Wiggins is off to Maine in July.
Whanganui comedian Dave Wiggins is heading for the US to tackle multiple health issues but the trip won’t come cheap.
A fundraiser - Jokes for June - has already raised thousands to help him and his family on their journey.
Wiggins said his health began deteriorating around 2010.
“My body sorted of crashed with chronic fatigue and pain and I was diagnosed with arthritis in the spine, which is auto-immune.
“I battled that and had a bit of a breakthrough after seven years. I was feeling good.
“Then, in mid-2020, I lost all my peripheral vision and was diagnosed with MS (multiple sclerosis).”
He said he was sure there must be something going on “underneath all this stuff”.
“I have a history of fatigue and pain which was unexplained by the medical system and I‘ve got three autoimmune conditions.
“Something deeper must be going on.”
Further testing revealed Wiggins had Chronic Lyme Disease.
“Basically, you get bitten by a tick,” he said.
“One thing that happens is a big rash and a bull’s eye-type thing and you treat it with antibiotics.
“I don’t remember having a big, acute case but it got in my system. I ended up having a bad case of food poisoning and that weakened my immune system. Then it all came out and it was downhill from there.”
A bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, flourishes inside the tick, migrating from the gut to the saliva glands.
It can penetrate human skin when the tick takes a blood meal, disseminating via the blood to multiple tissues.
When chronic, the disease comes with symptoms such as arthritis, fatigue, muscle pain and minor cognitive impairments such as headaches and sleep disturbances.
As well as MS, Wiggins is dealing with ankylosing spondylitis, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis.
He returned to stand-up comedy in 2021 after 10 years away.
Along with business partner Elizabeth McMenamin-Pervan, he founded events company Hello Comedy in 2022.
Its first comedy gala, held on June 16 at The Royal Whanganui Opera House, sold out.
“I got thrown with this MS stuff and I wasn’t 100 per cent but I thought ‘This is my life and what do I want to do with it?’,” Wiggins said.
“Comedy is what I’m passionate about and I’m trying to do it in balance with all the other things that are important to me, like family and friendships.”
He said he had relapsing and remitting MS.
For him, that meant getting hit by “a big attack” around once a year.
“It was my peripheral vision, then it was my leg, then it was my leg again.
“Last year, I couldn’t move my left leg for a couple of weeks. It healed eventually but it’s not as strong or coordinated as it was.
“There is no way to tell when the next attack is going to be or how bad it’s going to be.”
He and his family are hoping for answers when they travel to Maine in a couple of weeks.
That is where Wiggins grew up and it’s where the specialist is based.
“We want to deal with what we believe are these underlying infections and viruses that are in my system triggering all this,” Wiggins said.
“It’s hard to explain what fatigue is like. It’s not just being sleepy tired all the time, it almost feels like you’re wearing a heavy backpack or something is dragging you down all the time.”
The Jokes for June fundraiser, set up by family friends, has raised over $11,000 so far.
Supporters post videos of themselves telling jokes, with the majority coming from kids.
One standout so far has come from Wiggins’ wife, Angie Wiggins.
“What do Winnie the Pooh and Alexander the Great have in common?
“They have the same middle name.”
The Jokes for June page can be found at https://www.chuffed.org/project/jokesforjune
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