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There are some days my wife can't even get out of bed. This from a woman that went up to 10 years straight, with out taking a sick day. But my wife's doctor did not test for all of these illnesses before he gave the fibro diagnosis. In 1998 and the CFS diagnosis in late 1999. He left one out because it was "not in our area."

My wife, who is an RN, works out of our home doing Case Management for workmen's comp insurance had to quit her job because she just can not think clearly enough to write reports. She has severe brain fog, severe short-term memory loss, inability to concentrate, ringing in ears, light sensitivity, sore tight feeling throat, pain all over; feet, ankles, left shoulder, chest, neck, and hands you name it. Also other symptoms such as heart palpitations, nausea, spastic colon, irritable bowl, night sweats, mood swings, eye problems, blurred vision, eyes twitching and numbness in the right side of her face, hair loss, muscle spasms, weight changes, panic attacks, severe fatigue all the time, sinus infections, and can't sleep. She is always crying from the depression and the pain; some times she even has to crawl up the stairs at home because her knees hurt so badly. And she had also tested positive for the Epstein Barr virus.

I am now taking care of my wife and 4 kids full time. Back in early August she had gotten to the point where she would for get to take her meds. Sometimes she would not eat, this was do in part to either she would forget or just could not get out of bed to get something. At this time I decided to quit my job. What we had in our savings account I can always replace. All of this happened before her new diagnosis in Jan. 2001. I now do all of the cooking, cleaning etc. with a little help from the kids LOL. It's not easy, but I
will continue to take care of her. For richer for poorer in sickness and health, this I vowed to her and promised her. But this I do know, some people with fibromyalgia and CFS also
have an underlying illness that triggered these symptoms or mimic these symptoms. Fibromyalgia and CFS can also be triggered by an injury do to a car wreck, trauma due to a death in the family or even excessive stress, etc. But if it is a disease that triggered the symptoms then it can be treated, and help with the Fibro and CFS symptoms. My wife's Fibromyalgia and CFS diagnoses 2 years ago were wrong. She had an underlying illness.

The illness my wife has that actually trigged the Fibro symptoms, or should I say mimicked the symptoms, is widely over looked by the medical community around the world. Do FMS and CFS exist? Yes. Are all of the diagnoses of Fibro and CFS correct? No. In the last 6 months I have spent countless hours researching these illness. I have amassed well
over a 300 web sites pertaining to these illnesses. And some of these sights are from the U.S. Department of Health, NIAID, U.S. ARMY, CDC and more. Please read them carefully, especially where they talk about conditions that rule out Fibro and CFS, what causes Fibro, and the conditions that do not exclude a diagnosis of CFS. You will find one disease that keeps coming up over and over again: Lyme Disease. The CDC says this disease is in 49 U.S. states. According to the CDC, a county in which this disease is endemic is one in which at least two confirmed cases have been previously acquired or in which established populations of a known vector are infected with B burgdorferi (Lyme Disease). We have 113 counties in the state of Missouri. The CDC count as of early 1998 is 1,025 confirmed cases in our state. And the total for the U.S. is 115,181 and climbing, as doctors here and around the world are becoming more aware of it.

My wife tested positive the first time around on the Western Blot and met the CDC requirements for Lyme disease and babesioses, and so did our 11-year-old son. Thank God we caught his early. The CDC says to get an ELISA first and then follow up to confirm the ELISA with the Western Blot. However it has come to my attention that most Lyme Dr. go straight to the Western Blot because the ELISA's are so inaccurate. Many times the ELISA has to be done multiple times to even show anything. We had always wondered why, when she took some antibiotics they made her sicker, we thought she was becoming allergic to them. But some of the antibiotics she was on were actually starting to kill off the B burgdorferi virus. She appeared to get sicker because as the disease was being killed off it released toxins in her body, which in turn made the Fibro and CFS symptoms a lot worse and sometimes would create new ones, she would also get a rash some times. Not all antibiotics will cause this, just some. Please do not let your doctor tell you that Lyme Disease is not in your area because it is, and its not only in the U.S.

Do you go camping, vacation out of your state, have family visit from out of town, etc.? An infected tick can be as small as the head of a needle, it can attach fill up and give you B burgdorferi bacteria, and drop off in 24 hours with you never knowing it was there. Did you know that a tick lies on his back on a blade of grass with his legs outstretched so that when someone or something walks by, he can attach? Only 40 to 60% of people will get the rash and most don't even recall being bitten by a tick. Please remember that just because your Dr. says it is not in your area, he may not be correct. We have found that there are multitudes of people in our area that indeed have Lyme disease and contracted
it here in our Midwest State.