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How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

news.harvard.edu

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Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#81

Post by astura »

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…

How do you get a non-shit doctor? They are all shit in my experience.

Any nowadays I can't see ANY doctor outside of an ER or urgent care visit.

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#82

Post by switch007 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #79
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.

The primary objective of the NHS is to save money, it can seem. Therefore they create policies that reduce costs, write advice on nhs.uk that results in lower costs, restrict access to tests/drugs etc.

I DO understand the arguments about excessive diagnostics, antibiotics etc - but they certainly hide behind those arguments _a lot_.

Honestly it is so stressful and time-consuming to get anything other than a basic blood test or an ultrasound for any kind of issue. They will happily gaslight you in order to dissuade you ("Lyme does not exist in this area of the country". "These links say it does". "No")

There's a reason why private healthcare spending is on the rise ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/317868/private-healthcar... ) but AIUI private GPs leave a lot to be desired - they seem to be just for single-visit issues, and aren't included on anything except the most expensive private healthcare plans

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#83

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

rpmisms wrote: post #30

I'm incredibly fortunate to have never had a tick bite, but my wife has and got Lyme. Don't fuck around, go get the antibiotics immediately. If your doctor doesn't believe you, write a formal complaint to their board after finding another doctor.

I’m going to find a doctor to confirm to my diagnosis and try to get every doctor who disagrees with me reprimanded or fired along the way!

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#84

Post by consumer451 »

consumer451 wrote: post #54
qwertox wrote: post #48

I did get Lyme disease. I had no idea that it was a thing because I did not get educated about it, not even about ticks. I was just fascinated by the bullseye and never went to see a doctor. Sometime later I felt sick with fever and something like an itching inside the head, but since it went away, I never bothered with it again. I also never made a connection between this and the bullseye, maybe it was the cause. I'…

Similar thing happened to me. Got some bites, they went away. Didn’t think twice about it. A month or two later, I got very ill, it was Advanced Neurological Lyme disease. My vision loss was at about 30-40%, I still feel the arthritis all the time, but my vision is nearly entirely restored. One of the worst aspects was the cognitive loss. For months I suddenly had ADHD-like symptoms, and had brain fog like I had the…

I would like to point out that I did not have rings, just normal looking bug bites.

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#85

Post by huytersd »

xorcist wrote: post #68
huytersd wrote: post #7

Just go to your PCP and get your one time course of 2 doxycycline pills as soon as you get bitten. I also spray my hiking/yardwork pants and boots with permethrin. DEET is pretty useless, I’ve seen them walk right over DEET sprayed boots onto my pants. They make it about 5 steps through permethrin. I’m surprised advise from Harvard is getting this wrong. If you want even more protection, you can buy stocking like sla…

After every bite? That is a manual how to breed multi resistant Borrelia burgdorferi, the short version. Please be a responsible human being and consult a doctor. Common symptoms for a bacterial infections are flu like symptoms and a bullseye-like rash a few days after the bite. Be on the lookout for those and you will be fine.

Getting antibiotics maybe once a year is not excessive. Please stop being hyperbolic, I’m well aware of MRSAs and do my best to take them sparingly. Where I live between 50-70% of the deer ticks have Lyme disease so it’s not overkill.

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#86

Post by anadem »

thepasswordis wrote: post #79
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.

About a year ago I had the same attitude to antibiotics as you, but a basic antibiotic prescription led me to develop a Clostridiodes difficile [0] infection. People need to be aware that C. diff is AWFUL, and can easily occur after antibiotic treatment. It's totally debilitating, can even kill you, and is difficult and expensive to treat, often recurring after treatment.

I'm very fortunate in having a daughter who's a doctor, but had to use a $5,000 antibiotic to get cured.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/cdiff/what-is.html

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#87

Post by anthomtb »

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…

You had not heard the phrase "second opinion" before this experience?

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#88

Post by financetechbro »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #83
rpmisms wrote: post #30

I'm incredibly fortunate to have never had a tick bite, but my wife has and got Lyme. Don't fuck around, go get the antibiotics immediately. If your doctor doesn't believe you, write a formal complaint to their board after finding another doctor.

I’m going to find a doctor to confirm to my diagnosis and try to get every doctor who disagrees with me reprimanded or fired along the way!

Did you read the other comments? Lots of people giving anecdotal of doctors misdiagnosing their Lyme disease. It is a very valid concern

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#89

Post by goda90 »

leobg wrote: post #29
rapjr9 wrote: post #20

There is a new way to treat your property: https://lymeshield.com/ It uses the original Lyme vaccine (which worked but which was withdrawn because nobody was buying it) to treat mice. You put out a bait station and the mice eat the vaccine laden bait and it kills Lyme in the mice. Ticks overwinter on mice, so if the mice are immune the ticks also get immunized. It's not perfect but they claim a 75% reduction in Lyme…

In DE, we have “Zeckenrollen”. [1] They are filled with cotton material that mice will carry to their nest. And it’s treated with some tick killing substance. [1] https://zeckenrollen.de

Probably treated with permethrin. I've seen lots of guides about soaking cotton balls in permethrin and sticking them in cardboard tubes to place where mice might be nesting.

Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer

#90

Post by mindslight »

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…

I agree about self/family advocacy, and for sure some of the doctors one gets are engaged and good. I think doctors generally become less shit as the stakes go up (end of life, pediatrics, emergency triage, etc). The problem is getting them to talk about anything proactively before you get to that point.

My comment was more along the lines of if you know you need Doxycycline for a tick bite and they're holding off, you can't just come out and request it. They'll play the 'expert', defending their ego that they aren't working as a mere rubric-following pill-gatekeeper, and tell you how they know better, even though they hand prescriptions out like candy in other contexts. Rather you need to emphasize the symptoms you do have, equivocate rather than ruling things out (eg the tick could have been on me all day or even multiple days), and focus on the less probable bad outcomes that you're ultimately trying to avoid.

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