Daily Survival Guide

[macdobhran]

How to Recognize Lyme Disease
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• A round, "bull's-eye" rash on the skin, which may be very small or up to twelve inches across.


• Rashes or skin bruising that mimic common skin problems, including hives, eczema, sunburn, poison ivy, and flea bites. The rash will look like a bruise on those with dark skin color.


• Flu-like symptoms days or weeks after a bite: aches and pains in muscles and joints, low-grade fever, and fatigue.


• Other systemic symptoms can include: jaw pain and difficulty chewing; frequent or painful urination and/or repeated urinary tract infections; respiratory infection, cough, asthma, and pneumonia; ear pain, hearing loss, ringing, sensitivity to noise; sore throat, swollen glands, cough, hoarseness, difficulty swallowing; headaches, facial paralysis, seizures, meningitis, stiff neck; burning, tingling, or prickling sensations; loss of reflexes, loss of coordination; stomach pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, loss of appetite; and irregular heartbeat, palpitations, heart block, enlarged heart, fainting, inflammation of muscle or membrane, shortness of breath, and chest pain.

Comments

[netsearcher.livejournal.com]

You can have the disease and not even be aware that you've been bitten. Baby deer ticks are TINY. Like the size of the period in this sentence. If you're not sure if it's lyme, go seek medical attention. And read the antibiotic instructions - iron will render doxycycline pretty useless if you have them both in your stomach at the same time; even bread is made with enriched flour. Feeling queasy from the antibiotic stinks if you take it on an empty stomach, but IMO I'd rather KNOW it's going to do it's job, and I got tired of trying to figure out what food was low enough in iron to safely eat with it.

I know several people who were not lucky enough to have (or notice) a rash and wound up with the secondary symptoms, which landed them in a hospital. Bad stuff. :(

[mizjawnson.livejournal.com]

So taking my iron supplement with the doxycycline was probably a bad idea? Gee, thanks for telling me, Dr. Quackers! (Directed at my former Dr. Quackers (I swear she was*), not you.)

*She kept having me take blood tests and after each blood test, she put me on a round of doxycycline. When round 3 was proposed, I asked for my test results so I could seek a specialist. Guess what my test results say? NEGATIVE. All three GD tests say NEGATIVE.

Last I read, you had to have the tick in you for 24 hours for the disease to transfer. I did not.

[netsearcher.livejournal.com]

The blood tests are notoriously unreliable. The first time I went to my doctor with the rash I knew that. She asked if I wanted to have one, saying the health dept likes to see stats (why I can't imagine since the test is unreliable). I was self pay, so I'd be footing the bill for that nonsense. I asked her if she'd change the recommended treatment of doxy if the test came back negative. She said absolutely NOT.

I passed on the test. :-p
http://www.drugs.com/doxycycline.html says it's ok to take the iron supplement while on it, but not within 2 hours of each other. The idea is not to have them being absorbed at the same time. And nobody told me about that either - I only knew because I'd read the computer printout that the pharmacy provided with the vial of pills. There's important stuff on those, but I think a lot of people don't read them and just go by what the vial label says. :(

If the tick (that you know of) wasn't attached for 24 hours, why were you being treated? I don't think it's the norm to dose a patient (who has no symptoms) just for being bitten, unless the tick itself is returned for testing and comes back positive.

[mizjawnson.livejournal.com]

I had a rash. Actually, I had two rashes, but one was athlete's foot not on my foot and the two were almost right next to each other.

I got the tick bite during the night - I remember because I felt a sharp sting and sort-of woke-up. I just ignored it and went back to sleep. In the morning, that's where the tick was. We didn't think to keep the tick.

I got a bulls-eye style rash and went to the nurse's office at work. He told me to get immediate treatment. The doc's office couldn't see me for 2 weeks, so I went to urgent care. They did the doxycycline treatment as a precaution - as well as doing the first blood test.

When I followed up with my doc (and trust, I'm using the term "doc" loosely), she had me finish out the first round of doxy, wait some weeks, get tested again, get the (negative) results, put me back on doxy, wait again, get tested again, get the (negative) results, and then we were going to consider our treatment options when I requested to get a copy of my test results.

[zammis.livejournal.com]

Its really diagnosed clinically for a lot of us- my test results were all negative til I had been on IV antibiotics for 3 months. The test doesn't look for ALL of the Lyme markers- its very flawed.

Also, the rash is only seen in, as I recall, about 30% of people. While the rash is a dead giveaway, the symptoms alone should tell you to get to your doctor.

While doxy is a pain in the ass, you do NOT want this sh*t lingering in your system. Trust me. :)

[netsearcher.livejournal.com]

If you didn't have any symptoms after the round of doxy, I would have not bothered with the other tests. I'm not sure what the point was. Basically, if it looks like Lyme, and it smells like Lyme, it should be treated as Lyme.

[netsearcher.livejournal.com]

Also, the rash is only seen in, as I recall, about 30% of people. While the rash is a dead giveaway, the symptoms alone should tell you to get to your doctor.

Yep. As much as I dislike the side effects of doxy, every time I take it, I thank my body for telling me early that I need it. I'm hoping that if it does that now, it'll consistently do that in the future. I really, REALLY wish they had a good vaccine for it. The one that had been out got yanked because it *caused* the very problems the disease did. But I'd love to be able to be outside and not worry.

[mizjawnson.livejournal.com]

The point of the additional tests was that I was under the care of Dr. Quacker Jacks!

(The office also once tested me, in office - against my insurance policies, for Norovirus when I had an upset stomach. They also had my husband on an injection schedule - and then repeatedly failed to have his injection in stock.)