| "Diagnosis" Continued |
| But, as some of us know, there are doctors out there that just don't want to hear what we have to say. The severe pain, the fatigue, all the symptoms that you are having; they are all in your head. They say, �You look okay to me, just put on a happy face, lose some weight, and get on with your life.� This in part, may be due to the fact that some doctors are not putting enough time and effort into their on going education. Or it may be because you just can't teach an old dog new tricks. Regardless of what the reason is, more research into these chronic illnesses needs to be done. The are more and more people falling prey to them. If you are thinking of being tested and your doctor tells you that you don't have Lyme disease and that you cannot get Lyme disease because it is not in this area, then ask him to put that statement in his doctor's notes and give you a copy of it. The first web sight is the Lyme Disease Risk Assessment that was done by the US ARMY, 1983-1996. Go look at the risk factors for the military installations in and around your state. Keep in mind that some of these risk assessments haven't been updated for many years and now are a lot higher. http://www.utech.net/users/10766/lyme.html The 2nd sight is also from the ARMY, go down to where it says, The importance of these studies, if you live in an area local to one of the facilities that has a risk for Lyme disease, is that your doctor is not correct when he says, "You could not possibly have Lyme disease, there is no Lyme disease in the area. http://www.utech.net/users/10766/sumstate.txt Then you may want to find a LLD (Lyme Literate Doctor) or an internist or at the least another family doctor for a 2nd opinion. But make sure they follow the CDC criteria for testing and diagnosing the Lyme disease. The Western Blot is not 100% accurate, but it's the most effective test being used to diagnosis Lyme disease, you have to be off antibiotics for at least 15 days before having the test done because they may cause a false negative. Lyme disease is very slow growing, it has three different stages and in some people it can take many years to progress to stage three. The Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi is a type of bacteria called a spirochete that is able to move around the body through the bloodstream and between tissue. It can also invade tissue, replicate, and leave the cell - destroying the cell as it emerges. Sometimes as the bacteria emerges, the cell wall collapses around the bacteria forming a "cloaking device." This action may aid the bacteria's ability to hide from the immune system. When Lyme disease is diagnosed; there is some controversy among doctors. They agree on what antibiotics work best, but not on how long they need to be prescribed. Some say 4 to 6 weeks others say 6 months to a year, but after reading research papers and personal Lyme stories, most are saying 6 months to a year have worked best for them. When Lyme disease is treated with the right antibiotics and period of time, the disease will go into remission but can flare up at any time. The severity of the symptoms and the damage after treatment depends on how long it's been there. |