So when did I contract Lyme disease? I have no idea. I lived in New Jersey and spent a lot of time in upstate NY and in Massachusetts. I could have gotten it at any point. But I never noticed the "tell-tale" target shaped rash. They say 50% of people who have been infected don't notice or get the rash.
I move to Florida in the fall of 2001. September 9th, 2001 to be exact.
I had a good first year in Florida. My sister and I traveled to Holland, England, Scotland and Ireland in the summer of 2002 for an amazing whirlwind one week trip. I had a hard time keeping up with my speed-walking sister and was fairly tired, but didn't think anything of it.
When we got home, the fatigue continued... and steadily got worse. I saw a doctor and had some blood work done, and the test came back with a positive ANA. In laymen's terms, it was a good indicator that I had lupus and the doctor sent me to a rheumatologist (a specialist that treats lupus). He told me I didn't have enough symptoms of lupus to diagnosis me, but told me he could put me on medicine that might make me feel better. I was opposed to taking meds without knowing what was wrong with me, so I declined (I've found out down the road how good of a decision that was, thanks be to God!).
This is where my history gets a little bit muddled. I chalk it up to the Lyme disease and fatigue. Unfortunately, there are huge chunks of my life that I really don't recall. Lyme disease can cause memory loss. I don't know how much of my lack of memory is normal and how much is because of the Lyme disease. But I guess it doesn't matter why I can't remember.
Let's see...
- I saw an herbalist for a little while and took lots and lot of pills and supplements to see if it would help. It did for a little while, but then I seemed to crash back down into fatigue again.
- I saw another doctor for a second opinion. He said I looked perfectly healthy and maybe I should go on antidepressants.
- At some point in all of this mess, I had a doctor (or 2) test me for Lyme disease because I suspected that could be the problem, but the tests came back negative (more on that subject later).
- I saw a homeopathic doctor that was recommended to me by some friends who had been successfully treated for cancer by him. It helped... for a while. It also cost a lot of money.
- I saw another doctor at some point in there. He told me I needed to exercise more and that he could put me on antidepressants if I wanted (notice a trend here?).
- I saw another doctor, recommended by a friend who had been treated for Lyme disease. He was probably the best out of the bunch. He actually listened to me. But the test for Lyme came back negative, according to the CDC standard of testing for Lyme disease.
What's the CDC standard? It's a little complicated to explain - this link is to an article on the subject. Basically, the test checks certain bands of your DNA to see if you're infected. It has to show up in 5+ bands of your DNA to be positive. I only had it present in 2 bands of DNA. So, according to them, I wasn't infected. Yeah. Sure. Thanks guys.
But this doctor still went ahead and treated me with antibiotics - better safe than sorry, he said. He put me on a one month course. I don't even remember if I felt better or not after that.
FYI, we're probably somewhere in 2006 now. We've covered about four years.
Somewhere around that time, I started having migraines which gradually became a daily occurrence. Talk about miserable. It was hard enough to function being drastically fatigued all the time (not to mention the brain fog I was experiencing because of the Lyme) but when you add daily headaches on top of it...
But that's enough for now. I know I have a hard time reading long emails/posts before my attention starts to wander. Did I stop in time? Do I still have your attention? :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment