My husband accepted a faculty position at the University of Hawaii Hilo commencing in August 1998. In June 1999, after a year’s separation, I joined my husband in Hawaii and sent our three healthy Greyhounds (retired racers) for the 30-day quarantine. As a result of that quarantine experience our male lost half of his ear and our two females contacted Babesia, a tick borne disease very often fatal to Greyhounds. Besides the tremendous costs of separate residences while preparing our dogs for the quarantine, airfares to fly our dogs to the Aloha state, expenses for the pre 30-day quarantine preparations, and the actual quarantine expenses, we were further burdened with enormous medical bills for blood titers only done on the mainland, surgery and medications flown in from the Mainland (Imidocarb dipropionate then unavailable in Hawaii). Fortunately our two females survived.
Several weeks ago our eldest female had tremendous pain and inability to move her neck. Now stabilized, comfortable and on massive doses of several medications, her symptoms are consistent with tick borne infections specifically Babesia. The horrors of Hawaii’s unscientific and barbaric quarantine evidently extend far beyond the 31-days of residence and may now claim another victim three and one-half years later.
You must permit Hawaii to enter the 21st century.
”’Holly Priestley is from Levittown, Pennsylvania.”’