Why is it that every time I read something like this my whole body feels itchy? Or when I read about lice I feel an urge to scratch my head? Like, is there a term for this? Some article?
Maybe a stress response? Any pain or sensitivity?
How to prevent Lyme disease this summer
91–100 of 146 posts
Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer
#92There 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a new way to treat your property: https://lymeshield.com/ It uses the original Lyme vaccine (which worked but which was withdrawn because nobody was buying it) to treat mice.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…
Reminds me of efforts around edible rabies vaccines that they have dropped in the wilderness to vaccinate wild animals. The big hold up there is how to get the bats vaccinated too. I've seen some studies into vaccines that are designed to stick to the bat and that will spread to its friends while they groom each other.
It would be great if governments put a bunch of effort into eradicating these diseases.
Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer
#93Earlier 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…
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.
Most of it's just by luck. Some can be by references or online reviews.
"They are all shit in my experience."
I don't know, maybe your area is bad, maybe you've had limited experiences, maybe you're a statistical anomaly. Or maybe the problem is on the other side of the relationship.
Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Even for HN, that's a tone deaf response to a thread of stories of mistaken trust in GPs
Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
No I opened this post with my eyes closed, picked a random comment and responded.
My point isn’t that misdiagnoses don’t happen, they happen for a lot of things other than Lyme, but the fact that people will take vengeance on doctors when the detection of Lyme is unpredictable (tests only really detect it within a certain timeframe of infection), the ambiguity around symptoms and their relation to Lyme, and the historical baggage around Lyme in general, makes it a very hard problem for medical professionals to give definite recommendations and or treatments.
Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Antibiotics can be really awful for your body. So many very important things are done for us by our bacterial microbiome but some doctors give out these dangerous medications like candy even for viral infections with no indication of secondary bacterial infections. [0]
The body is like a hotel for bacteria. Under good conditions the rooms are filled with bacteria that don't harm us and may provide useful services. But take a broad spectrum antibiotic and suddenly all the rooms are empty and ready for colonization by nasty bugs like C. diff.
Antibiotics have also been a wonderful invention for preventing death but they should be used much more sparingly in humans and much more sparingly for agriculture.
0: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2782166
Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer
#97Same story as a lot of people here. I got Lyme when I was in my early twenties. I had no bullseye rash and no evidence of a tick bite. And I lived in California which made it even more confusing.
Woke up one day with debilitating headaches (I never got headaches normally). Lasted for two weeks, doctor said I had "viral meningitis" which should clear up on its own. Coincidentally they did, and thought all is well!
Next week my elbow hurts. Then my pinky. Then my foot. Then my neck. Every day it would be a new obscure part of my body, until a month in I was in so much pain I could barely walk. For someone in their early 20s, this was debilitating.
The doctor comedy of errors continued. They said I had juvenile arthritis, which is a common misdiagnosis and an insane one considering how acutely this came on. She prescribed me steroids but I declined because I didn't trust her diagnosis (fun fact I learned later: steroids make Lyme worse and harder to treat). I got referred to a rheumatologist who likely would have continued down the same short-sighted path, but thanks to a modern medical miracle -- no appointments available for 6 months (!), that didn't happen either.
I was losing patience and time, so I started researching everything I could. I forced the doctor to run blood tests for everything possible, including Lyme, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, everything. She almost refused to give me the tests because "that's impossible! you've never had the bullseye and there are no ticks in California!" She even accidentally left the Lyme test off my lab sheet (??) which I only caught when I double checked the paperwork with a lab tech.
I was starting to lose hope thinking being nearly paralyzed would be the rest of my life.
And then the western blot came back positive.
48 hours on doxycycline and EVERYTHING disappeared. Over 3 months of debilitating pain, and all I needed was a pill of the most common antibiotic out there. Just wow.
I had to follow up with the CDC and an infectious disease specialist. So how did I get bit by a tick all the way in California? Turns out, I went camping near Boston a week before this all happened. I told the whole story to the infectious disease doctor (who grew up in the northern Midwest). His response?
"Classic Lyme"
Get tested for Lyme y'all. It's one of the most misdiagnosed infections out there. And if you have all the symptoms but test is negative and have been in nature, just take doxycycline. Not worth risking your life.
Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer
#98Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer
#99Same story as a lot of people here. I got Lyme when I was in my early twenties. I had no bullseye rash and no evidence of a tick bite. And I lived in California which made it even more confusing. Woke up one day with debilitating headaches (I never got headaches normally). Lasted for two weeks, doctor said I had "viral meningitis" which should clear up on its own. Coincidentally they did, and thought all is well! Nex…
Did you tell the first doctors you had recently been in the woods in MA?
Re: How to prevent Lyme disease this summer
#100Same story as a lot of people here. I got Lyme when I was in my early twenties. I had no bullseye rash and no evidence of a tick bite. And I lived in California which made it even more confusing. Woke up one day with debilitating headaches (I never got headaches normally). Lasted for two weeks, doctor said I had "viral meningitis" which should clear up on its own. Coincidentally they did, and thought all is well! Nex…
Did you tell the first doctors you had recently been in the woods in MA?
Yep that was one of my justifications for wanting to get a Lyme test. Their response: "well you never had a rash and don't remember being bitten by a tick so that sounds impossible"