[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

They caught my Lyme early only because I hounded my doctor.

Having just returned to Silicon Valley from Munich, I presented with the classical bulls-eye rash. “But we don’t have Lyme here,” the doc protested. I had to talk very slowly and carefully to get him to understand that I’d been bitten nine time zones away. I showed him a fax from a family friend who is a doctor in Munich, saying that Lyme is endemic there and how they treat it immediately if the bulls-eye is present. My doc grudgingly agreed to the blood test—but wouldn’t prescribe the doxycycline until the resulots were known—then was dumbfounded when it came back positive. “But we don’t have Lyme here!” he marveled.

SIGH.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

The emergency room doc and my general practitioner chuckled and practically called me silly when I asked if it was possible that I had Lyme or maybe West Nile. I knew I had been in the woods and I had brushed off some ticks, but never knew I had a bite. It was a real stroke of luck and divine intervention that the wife of another Lyme sufferer in our town told my husband to get me to the specialist her husband sees. By that time I was in such bad shape that they began the antibiotics and anti-siezure meds that day, before the blood tests were even sent to the lab.

[NVDave]

As bad as the MD’s are, some of the people that get it are equally dense.

I told my mother that she probably got it from a tick off her horses, and that the whitetail deer in the area were likely the reserve hosts for ticks. I told her that if she really wanted to kill the ticks, she a) had to treat her horses at least once/week with a pesticide dust practically forever and b) start convincing the locals to undertake a slaughter of deer in the area.

Of course neither happened.

[Richard Kimball]

A friend of mine had the same problem, except he didn't know he had Lyme until it had secured an excellent foothold. The doctors kept telling him it was (a) in his head, or (b) arthritis. Unfortunately, to get effective treatment for Lyme, it must be treated early, very early.

He was an excellent finish carpenter, but had to give it up because his hands swelled so badly he couldn't hold his tools. Here in Texas, it's out there, but not endemic. However, our doctors have finally gotten to the point that a tick bite gets an automatic Lyme test now.

[null and void]

Get another doctor.

Mine listens.