Aa
LLMD in Dallas
Does anyone know if there are any LLMD in the Dallas area? I am starting to think this is what i have....
bruce
bruce
Couldn't have said it better myself.
You're entitled to be bummed about it all, then yank up your socks and come back to visit with us. This website has pulled me out of some gloomy times. No one here is medically trained, that I know of, but trading information has been very helpful to me.
Part of Lyme is the effect on the brain ... including thought process and emotions. Sometimes it's hard to filter that out, but good days come again, and every day progress is made.
Best wishes --
You're entitled to be bummed about it all, then yank up your socks and come back to visit with us. This website has pulled me out of some gloomy times. No one here is medically trained, that I know of, but trading information has been very helpful to me.
Part of Lyme is the effect on the brain ... including thought process and emotions. Sometimes it's hard to filter that out, but good days come again, and every day progress is made.
Best wishes --
This *****....
The state medical went after one Lyme doctor in Dallas. He wasn't forced to stop practicing, but he decided to retire because of the controversy and witchhunt.
There is another one that's a neurologist, but he doesn't take new patients. The Texas medical board went after him more than a few times.
There are MD's, DO's, and ND's who treat Lyme with alternative medicine. It seems that as long as they don't prescribe pharmaceutical antibiotics, they inherit some kind of safety umbrella.
The closest LLMD is in Lubbock and he works in conjunction with Spirostat lab. I hear he/they can isolate spirochetes and performs culture sensitivity testing, etc but I've never been to him. I don't think he takes insurance. Most Lyme doctors can't and don't take it.
Many Infectious Disease docs won't touch a Lyme case here even when you have all the lab evidence they would need. Don't be surprised if you call around and hear "we don't see patients with Lyme Disease."
If you are lucky, they will give you up to 28 days of antibiotics, but if you've been sick for an extended period of time, I wouldn't bet on improvement. You will then be labeled as having Post-Lyme syndrome, an autoimmune disease, psychological disease, or some other incurable disease, and the focus instantly changes from treatment to symptom management. The only problem is that the symptom management approach doesn't usually work too well for the patient, and the patient continues to deteriorate.
I hope I didn't discourage you and I wish you luck on your journey. Little did you know, you landed in the middle of a controversial disease.
There is another one that's a neurologist, but he doesn't take new patients. The Texas medical board went after him more than a few times.
There are MD's, DO's, and ND's who treat Lyme with alternative medicine. It seems that as long as they don't prescribe pharmaceutical antibiotics, they inherit some kind of safety umbrella.
The closest LLMD is in Lubbock and he works in conjunction with Spirostat lab. I hear he/they can isolate spirochetes and performs culture sensitivity testing, etc but I've never been to him. I don't think he takes insurance. Most Lyme doctors can't and don't take it.
Many Infectious Disease docs won't touch a Lyme case here even when you have all the lab evidence they would need. Don't be surprised if you call around and hear "we don't see patients with Lyme Disease."
If you are lucky, they will give you up to 28 days of antibiotics, but if you've been sick for an extended period of time, I wouldn't bet on improvement. You will then be labeled as having Post-Lyme syndrome, an autoimmune disease, psychological disease, or some other incurable disease, and the focus instantly changes from treatment to symptom management. The only problem is that the symptom management approach doesn't usually work too well for the patient, and the patient continues to deteriorate.
I hope I didn't discourage you and I wish you luck on your journey. Little did you know, you landed in the middle of a controversial disease.
As a result, patients who seek diagnosis and treatment from an ILADS-type MD are too often treated badly by so-called mainstream medicine. It has happened to me personally: I consulted some 20 highly trained, very experienced MDs in seeking an explanation for my illness, which left me unable to hold down a job or take care of my family. I saw internists, endocrinologists, ER docs, infectious disease docs, at least one neurologist, asked my gynecologist for ideas, and was getting nowhere. I was very ill, and everyone was telling me I was all right ... except for one doc who was in the process of closing his practice. He sat down, heard me out, looked at my test results, and then looked at me with great sincerity and said: 'I know you are ill, I just don't know what it is.' This validation is at times the hardest thing for a Lyme patient to find.
The next hardest thing for a Lyme patient to find is an LLMD: they are few and far between in many areas, for a number of reasons. Some states apparently have in their laws the principle of 'freedom of conscience', under which MDs are permitted and protected in practicing medicine as they best see fit. Other states which lack freedom of conscience laws can and have shut down the medical practices of MDs who do not toe the line of the medical hierarchy in that state. As a result, some states have few LLMDs and the patients are left with little or no access to the health care of their choice.
That is why we don't post LLMD names in the open here. A little searching online can usually find an LLMD in a particular area, but giving a roadmap to the antiLLMD medical establishment is something we try to avoid doing.
Progress is being made in the Lyme world. ILADS has an annual meeting, and the one just held presented some very interesting matters. If you are interested in reading more, I would suggest ILADS [dot] com, particularly the tab 'About Lyme.'
The medical world has mired itself in a world of orthodoxy, a very odd thing for a group of professionals who should proceed at all times with intelligence and learning tempered by humility. It's the humility part that IDSA seems to have trouble with.
Best wishes ... and go find yourself an LLMD! One thing an LLMD is more likely to do is to test you for coinfections, which are bonus diseases often carried by the Lyme ticks.
The next hardest thing for a Lyme patient to find is an LLMD: they are few and far between in many areas, for a number of reasons. Some states apparently have in their laws the principle of 'freedom of conscience', under which MDs are permitted and protected in practicing medicine as they best see fit. Other states which lack freedom of conscience laws can and have shut down the medical practices of MDs who do not toe the line of the medical hierarchy in that state. As a result, some states have few LLMDs and the patients are left with little or no access to the health care of their choice.
That is why we don't post LLMD names in the open here. A little searching online can usually find an LLMD in a particular area, but giving a roadmap to the antiLLMD medical establishment is something we try to avoid doing.
Progress is being made in the Lyme world. ILADS has an annual meeting, and the one just held presented some very interesting matters. If you are interested in reading more, I would suggest ILADS [dot] com, particularly the tab 'About Lyme.'
The medical world has mired itself in a world of orthodoxy, a very odd thing for a group of professionals who should proceed at all times with intelligence and learning tempered by humility. It's the humility part that IDSA seems to have trouble with.
Best wishes ... and go find yourself an LLMD! One thing an LLMD is more likely to do is to test you for coinfections, which are bonus diseases often carried by the Lyme ticks.
In the meantime, people were getting sick and not all of them were getting well. Some were very ill; some moderately so; some just didn't have the get-up-and-go they once did. The ID docs and the rheumatologists continued their research, but the diagnostic criteria didn't change, largely because Wormser, Steere, the IDSA and others were locked in to their established work (as well, I have read, as some lucrative pharmaceutical contracts), and they published many important papers building upon their earlier work.
As medicine has become more complex, the friendly family MD has become an endangered species, and many med school grads head straight for specialty work, for many reasons including scientific plaudits, respect, personal interest in a certain field, and money. The generalists and the specialists in various fields all look to pronouncements by specialists in *other* fields in diagnosing and treating patients. The IDSA docs have the infectious disease territory staked out, so when a patient comes into an MD's office with an infectious disease, the doc is likely to rely on the guidelines for diagnosis and treatment laid out by the IDSA. Thus the reputations of Wormser, Steere, et al. as discoverers of Lyme disease carried them high -- but the fame may have caused them to defend their own work rather than critique it and continue to explore it.
As a result, to this day, the position of the IDSA is that Lyme disease is hard to get (unless you live in designated Lyme areas, and have the bullseye rash and tick bite, you can't have Lyme), and Lyme Disease is easy to cure (with a couple weeks of antibiotics).
Fortunately there are heretics among the MDs, many of whom belong to another organization, the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society (ilads [dot] com). ILADS follows the scientific method in diagnosis and treatment, relying not on decades-old work but on their own investigation and research.
Given that IDSA and the US Centers Disease of Control (CDC) are birds of a feather, they consider ILADS a renegade organization of dangerous MDs no better than quacks because of their disagreements with IDSA standards of diagnosis and treatment. There is a place for a professional organization to set standards, of course, and when done appropriately, the public is safeguarded from those who promote bogus diagnosis and treatment. As a field in flux, Lyme is burdened with its share of strange cures and strange people, and the IDSA is glad to lump them together with the serious ILADS-type MDs who see Lyme as something other than a rare, minor inconvenience.
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As medicine has become more complex, the friendly family MD has become an endangered species, and many med school grads head straight for specialty work, for many reasons including scientific plaudits, respect, personal interest in a certain field, and money. The generalists and the specialists in various fields all look to pronouncements by specialists in *other* fields in diagnosing and treating patients. The IDSA docs have the infectious disease territory staked out, so when a patient comes into an MD's office with an infectious disease, the doc is likely to rely on the guidelines for diagnosis and treatment laid out by the IDSA. Thus the reputations of Wormser, Steere, et al. as discoverers of Lyme disease carried them high -- but the fame may have caused them to defend their own work rather than critique it and continue to explore it.
As a result, to this day, the position of the IDSA is that Lyme disease is hard to get (unless you live in designated Lyme areas, and have the bullseye rash and tick bite, you can't have Lyme), and Lyme Disease is easy to cure (with a couple weeks of antibiotics).
Fortunately there are heretics among the MDs, many of whom belong to another organization, the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society (ilads [dot] com). ILADS follows the scientific method in diagnosis and treatment, relying not on decades-old work but on their own investigation and research.
Given that IDSA and the US Centers Disease of Control (CDC) are birds of a feather, they consider ILADS a renegade organization of dangerous MDs no better than quacks because of their disagreements with IDSA standards of diagnosis and treatment. There is a place for a professional organization to set standards, of course, and when done appropriately, the public is safeguarded from those who promote bogus diagnosis and treatment. As a field in flux, Lyme is burdened with its share of strange cures and strange people, and the IDSA is glad to lump them together with the serious ILADS-type MDs who see Lyme as something other than a rare, minor inconvenience.
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Bruce,
Sad to say, you've just landed in the middle of the Lyme Wars. Welcome!
Here's the short version below. (If you are interested in the long version, I recommend the book 'Cure Unknown' by Pamela Weintraub; now in paperback and a cracking good read. Seriously!)
A few decades ago, some docs noticed a high number of odd arthritis cases around Lyme CT -- there was a constellation of symptoms including joint pain, fatigue, a round rash, and some other symptoms. The first docs to become interested in this new disease were rheumatologists (who got involved because of the joint pain) and infectious disease (ID) docs (because the infection came from tiny ticks). These docs, all well meaning I am sure, treated the patients with a couple weeks of antibiotics, as you would do for other infectious diseases. Patients seemed to get well, tho many had lingering problems of fatigue and sore joints, attributed to a continuing over reaction of the immune system to the now-dead bacteria.
The bacteria were formally named Borellia burgdorferi (B. burgdorferi or Bb for short), named after the scientist Willy Burgdorfer who first identified the infective agent, but the name 'Lyme disease' stuck because of the first place the malady was recognized in Connecticut. The infectious disease docs, including two named Wormser and Steere, researched the disease and invented a vaccine against it.
Unfortunately, Bb is a trickier bug than anyone anticipated, and the vaccine failed, but in the process Wormer, Steere, and the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) were laying out the parameters of what was thought to be known about Lyme. As good epidemiologists, the researchers set up surveillance criteria to track the spread of this new disease, including the requirement that a patient must have certain specific characteristic symptoms before being counted as a confirmed case of Lyme disease. Among those criteria were a circular rash and a tick bite.
In the meantime, suburban America was spreading into former farmlands, people were busy building new homes in the leafy semi-rural suburbs, pro-animal/anti-hunting advocates were severely restricting deer hunting ... and the Lyme bacteria were being carried by infected deer ticks on deers, dogs, mice, and other critters, into parks, playgrounds and backyards where people lived and played. (There is also a conspiracy theory that the US government was mucking around with germ warfare experiments on an island near Connecticut, and the bugs got away from them. Given the hundreds of strains of Bb here and in Europe as well as elsewhere around the world, I don't place much faith in the germ warfare approach ... Mother Nature is much trickier than mere humans.)
[continued on next page down]
Sad to say, you've just landed in the middle of the Lyme Wars. Welcome!
Here's the short version below. (If you are interested in the long version, I recommend the book 'Cure Unknown' by Pamela Weintraub; now in paperback and a cracking good read. Seriously!)
A few decades ago, some docs noticed a high number of odd arthritis cases around Lyme CT -- there was a constellation of symptoms including joint pain, fatigue, a round rash, and some other symptoms. The first docs to become interested in this new disease were rheumatologists (who got involved because of the joint pain) and infectious disease (ID) docs (because the infection came from tiny ticks). These docs, all well meaning I am sure, treated the patients with a couple weeks of antibiotics, as you would do for other infectious diseases. Patients seemed to get well, tho many had lingering problems of fatigue and sore joints, attributed to a continuing over reaction of the immune system to the now-dead bacteria.
The bacteria were formally named Borellia burgdorferi (B. burgdorferi or Bb for short), named after the scientist Willy Burgdorfer who first identified the infective agent, but the name 'Lyme disease' stuck because of the first place the malady was recognized in Connecticut. The infectious disease docs, including two named Wormser and Steere, researched the disease and invented a vaccine against it.
Unfortunately, Bb is a trickier bug than anyone anticipated, and the vaccine failed, but in the process Wormer, Steere, and the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) were laying out the parameters of what was thought to be known about Lyme. As good epidemiologists, the researchers set up surveillance criteria to track the spread of this new disease, including the requirement that a patient must have certain specific characteristic symptoms before being counted as a confirmed case of Lyme disease. Among those criteria were a circular rash and a tick bite.
In the meantime, suburban America was spreading into former farmlands, people were busy building new homes in the leafy semi-rural suburbs, pro-animal/anti-hunting advocates were severely restricting deer hunting ... and the Lyme bacteria were being carried by infected deer ticks on deers, dogs, mice, and other critters, into parks, playgrounds and backyards where people lived and played. (There is also a conspiracy theory that the US government was mucking around with germ warfare experiments on an island near Connecticut, and the bugs got away from them. Given the hundreds of strains of Bb here and in Europe as well as elsewhere around the world, I don't place much faith in the germ warfare approach ... Mother Nature is much trickier than mere humans.)
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why is it so controversial??? am i missing something here?
Someone may send you a suggestion in a private message, but due to harrassment by local/state authorities, we don't usually publish LLMD names in the clear here.
That said, here are some Lyme-related websites, at least some of which have a referral function. You can also simply google 'Dallas LLMD' and see what pops up.
standupforlyme [dot] org (I think this is a Texas-oriented website)
txlda [dot] org (txlda I think is short for Texas lyme disease association)
This is the main website for LLMDs:
ilads [dot] org
Under the tab 'About Lyme', Dr Burrascano's 'Diagnostic Hints ...' can be useful. They are intended for medical practitioners, but accessible to everyone.
Here are some other websites which may have referral functions:
lymediseaseassociation [dot] org
truthaboutlymedisease [dot] com
lymenet [dot] org
chroniclymedisease [dot] com
lymedisease [dot] org (California Lyme Disease Assn -- CALDA)
Best wishes!
That said, here are some Lyme-related websites, at least some of which have a referral function. You can also simply google 'Dallas LLMD' and see what pops up.
standupforlyme [dot] org (I think this is a Texas-oriented website)
txlda [dot] org (txlda I think is short for Texas lyme disease association)
This is the main website for LLMDs:
ilads [dot] org
Under the tab 'About Lyme', Dr Burrascano's 'Diagnostic Hints ...' can be useful. They are intended for medical practitioners, but accessible to everyone.
Here are some other websites which may have referral functions:
lymediseaseassociation [dot] org
truthaboutlymedisease [dot] com
lymenet [dot] org
chroniclymedisease [dot] com
lymedisease [dot] org (California Lyme Disease Assn -- CALDA)
Best wishes!
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