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How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

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Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#71

Post by maxrecursion »

giantg2 wrote: post #64
mindslight wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a typical experience of the US medical system, where you're lucky if you get ten minutes before they start looking around for a broom stick to shoo you out the door. One should have some idea of what levers one expects a doctor to pull. If a doctor isn't really engaging with your problem, then push towards those. Obviously you can't directly ask for them but rather focus on the right symptoms to nudge them the…

"You have to tiptoe around their ego." Only if you have a shit doctor. I've had to be an advocate for medical care of family members, and I've had a few doctors actually compliment me on being an engaged advocate for their treatment. You still want to be respectful and open minded, but some basic study of the condition/treatment/lingo can go a long way to them seeing you as an informed patient they are willing to wor…

When you go to an urgent care it is a total crapshoot. I've seen some of the worst doctors ever there. One literally looked at my throat for 5 seconds, said I had strep, and went back to playing on his phone, they weren't busy I was the only person in there.

I've had other misread tests for my kids, saying they had strep when they had RSV. But some urgent care doctors have been really good. I think the ratio is changing in the wrong direction though.

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#72

Post by armada651 »

jakjak123 wrote: post #43
armada651 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did get a tick bite that I only noticed after three days. I didn't screw around and immediately went to the urgent care to get that thing removed by a professional. They also didn't wait for any kind of rash before giving me antibiotics given how long the tick was there. Lyme disease is no joke.

Ticks are incredibly common. People in my area of the country get hundreds of ticks during their life. It's also fairly rare they carry Lyme disease and gets you infected. You definitively should not be given antibiotics without a clear reason.

I'm guessing that having a tick for longer than 24 to 48 hours was a clear enough reason. I assume people who get hundreds of ticks will be checking more thoroughly and remove them within two days.

I agree antibiotics shouldn't be prescribed without a clear reason. People are being prescribed antibiotics all over for things like the common cold and for some insane reason we're still putting antibiotics in farm animal feed.

But it seems unethical to then take a gamble on whether someone contracted Lyme disease or not just to give the antibiotics we save from that gamble to someone with a runny nose. If we want to save antibiotics then we should test the removed tick for Lyme disease, not wait for symptoms to appear.

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#73

Post by heelix »

Our kid was lucky enough to have the bullseye mark on her skin when she came down with a massive fever. Had not thrown out my medical microbiology college texts from the late 80's and sure enough - the picture matched up. She ended up getting some pretty serious antibiotics.

I really, really wish there was a human vaccination available for lymes. We treat our jacket and pant legs with permethrin when we are in heavy wood. That makes a huge difference for the normal wood ticks, so has become part of the normal routine.

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#74

Post by jvanderbot »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #62
switch007 wrote: post #55

I got Lyme when I was 26 (in an area with it, after handling an animal famous for ticks). GP refused to believe Lyme could be a possibility. Eventually got a test (probably an inferior one, knowing our health service), which came back negative. But I had a bullseye rash, flu-like symptoms etc. I'm convinced I had it. I wasn't prescribed antibiotics because the test was negative The 2 years following I had bad muscles…

I had a very similar story that I’ve shared on here before. I fortunately very much knew it was Lyme because I got it in Europe where the bullseye rash is much more common. My PCP, in his infinite wisdom, said it was a skin rash and wanted to refer me to a dermatologist instead. Why? Because he couldn’t be bothered to Wikipedia Lyme disease and learn that the European one takes 8 weeks to appear, and because the gest…

I suddenly had alopecia areata. If you don't want to Google it, there were coin-sized areas of my head spontaneously losing hair, starting with my beard.

My GP said "this is not a health problem, if you want a fuller beard use rogain". I was embarrassed enough to go home and try to tough it out.

Within 6 months the whole left side of my head was completely bare, except for splotchy outlines here and there. My right side had hair but it was spreading fast. I looked like a hyena. It was not a great experience.

Went to a dermatologist, got steroid shots, and my hair grew back in a month.

You get quotes for housework, apply to multiple jobs, test drive cars, but when it comes to health, we trust the first asshole with availability? Never again.

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#75

Post by armada651 »

xorcist wrote: post #67
armada651 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did get a tick bite that I only noticed after three days. I didn't screw around and immediately went to the urgent care to get that thing removed by a professional. They also didn't wait for any kind of rash before giving me antibiotics given how long the tick was there. Lyme disease is no joke.

While it is good to take this stuff seriously, there's also no reason to scare people. Having lived in an area where ticks are common, I remove them weekly, if not daily, from myself and the children. There's no reason to be scared and there's certainly no reason to wait for a professional. There's a lot of advice in the Internet why these must be removed in a special way, with a special compound, or whatever. This a…

> Do not try to self medicate or take prophylactic antibiotics unless specifically requested by a physician or you get a rash a few days after.

It was requested by my physician, I did not request them nor did I insist on being prescribed anything.

> You are likely to be absolutely fine. Living in an area where Lyme disease is common, I've had it a few times and it is treatable with antibiotics.

It is still a gamble on whether you will have clear enough symptoms in the short term to prompt an antibiotic treatment. Unfortunately unless you get the bullseye rash it's often not that clear that symptoms that appear much later are related to the tick bite.

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#76

Post by parthianshotgun »

dabber wrote: post #13
astura wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "Lyme disease," named after Lyme, Connecticut (which, in turn, gets its name from Lyme Regis in England). Not "limes," that's a fruit.

Sure, but I'm not a doctor and anyone who is living in an area that I'm speaking to will understand what I wrote and those that don't (perhaps yourself included) might learn a new colloquial phrase given the context of the comment.

We aren't mind readers, tell us the context, is it a regional spelling?

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#77

Post by giantg2 »

maxrecursion wrote: post #71
giantg2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You have to tiptoe around their ego." Only if you have a shit doctor. I've had to be an advocate for medical care of family members, and I've had a few doctors actually compliment me on being an engaged advocate for their treatment. You still want to be respectful and open minded, but some basic study of the condition/treatment/lingo can go a long way to them seeing you as an informed patient they are willing to wor…

When you go to an urgent care it is a total crapshoot. I've seen some of the worst doctors ever there. One literally looked at my throat for 5 seconds, said I had strep, and went back to playing on his phone, they weren't busy I was the only person in there. I've had other misread tests for my kids, saying they had strep when they had RSV. But some urgent care doctors have been really good. I think the ratio is chang…

These were in a variety of facility types and there wasn't any real pattern for me.

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#79

Post by thepasswordis »

switch007 wrote: post #55

I got Lyme when I was 26 (in an area with it, after handling an animal famous for ticks). GP refused to believe Lyme could be a possibility. Eventually got a test (probably an inferior one, knowing our health service), which came back negative. But I had a bullseye rash, flu-like symptoms etc. I'm convinced I had it. I wasn't prescribed antibiotics because the test was negative The 2 years following I had bad muscles…

I cannot understand why you wouldn’t get antibiotics. What possible risk could your doctor be imagining that would come from you taking antibiotics?

Our approach to medicine is so depressing.

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#80

Post by MichaelZuo »

jvanderbot wrote: post #74
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a very similar story that I’ve shared on here before. I fortunately very much knew it was Lyme because I got it in Europe where the bullseye rash is much more common. My PCP, in his infinite wisdom, said it was a skin rash and wanted to refer me to a dermatologist instead. Why? Because he couldn’t be bothered to Wikipedia Lyme disease and learn that the European one takes 8 weeks to appear, and because the gest…

I suddenly had alopecia areata. If you don't want to Google it, there were coin-sized areas of my head spontaneously losing hair, starting with my beard. My GP said "this is not a health problem, if you want a fuller beard use rogain". I was embarrassed enough to go home and try to tough it out. Within 6 months the whole left side of my head was completely bare, except for splotchy outlines here and there. My right s…

Roughly half the doctors are below average and probably more than half of GPs are below average...
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