Lyme disease.

[Crunchy Frog]

My mom just got it. She got her first symptoms about 2 1/2 weeks ago, and discovered the characteristic rash on the back of her knee a few days later. The rash was diagnosed by her doctor as "cellulitis", but she and I both thought it was much more like an EM rash, both in appearance and other characteristics. Already suspecting Lyme, she was able to get a grudgingly short course of Doxycycline out of him. We then both hit the internet and researched the living shit out of Lyme disease. She went back to him the following week reporting that a second "bullseye" type rash had appeared higher up on her leg (though it faded soon after) and her virtual certainty that it was Lyme. He gave her another small scrip for Doxycycline, and did go ahead and order a blood test.

Well, the test results came back and were positive. She definitely has Lyme. She's one of the lucky ones, we learned. She had really severe acute symptoms and she found the rash. She was pushy enough with her doctor to actually get tested, and she was fortunate enough to actually test positive.

Among the things that we learned; there is a huge and vicious medical controversy over the nature of Lyme disease, how easy or difficult it is to diagnose and treat, whether or not it can relapse or become chronic after "adequate" treatment and just what does constitute adequate treatment.

We also learned just how destructive this disease can be if left untreated or undertreated. My mom is an incredibly active, fit and energetic person, and I think she frankly got the shit scared out of her.

She and I ended up driving several hours out of town today to see an "alternative" doctor who is willing to treat Lyme with a more aggressive antibiotic regimen than any doctor here will. It's not like she's going nuts on the stuff. In fact, she has a nurse friend who is on a longer course of the same drug just to treat rosacea. She just would prefer to err on the side of overtreatment rather than undertreatment.

Anyway, just because you preempt your doctor with a diagnosis based on your own research, it doesn't necessarily mean that your diagnosis is wrong. Also, especially with Lyme, it seems like the larger controversy surrounding it inhibits many doctors from even thinking of it as a possibility, or treating it even in patients presenting with very obvious symptoms.

The author Amy Tan has written a terrifying account of what can happen when Lyme goes untreated. I can't seem to pull up her site right now, but I found an excerpt from her account here. http://www.prohealth.com/lyme/blog/boardDetail.cfm?id=2363