How worried should I be about Lyme Disease

[aperou]

I was just diagnosted with Lyme Disease last night, but I have been suffering from a lot of the symptoms for almost 2 months now. I have experienced chills, numbness, fever, swollen joints, muscle pain, swelling of eyes. rash, blur vision, stiff neck and back, headaches, and I am always tired. Besides that I am also suffering from stress, anxiety, poor concentration, and sleep disorder.

How worried should I be about the symptoms I am having and Lyme Disease all together? Most people I have talked to about this have said that it's no big deal because it can be treated with antibiotics. So am I just over reacting? Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated since I still have another week until my appointment with the specialist.

[gorbybelle]

from my own experience - getting the 'anxiety/stress' levels reduced helped a great deal - I know this is easier said than done - relaxation of body and mind isn't always easy - especially when you have an illness like lyme - which can seem overwhelming one day and the next virtually gone - many people with lyme tend to have 'flare-ups' often in four week cycles - this was the 'pattern' for me esp. in the early months.

I didn't get treatment for lyme untill about eighteen months into it - some folks don't get diagnosed/treated for years.  As has been said above - as long as you have a good 'knowledgeable' doctor - hopefully a 'lyme literate doc.' - known to lyme patients as 'LLMD's' - who will treat you with a high dose  and prob. atleast one month - of antibiotics - then as you have 'caught' this fairly early - I would say you have a very good chance of clearing the bacteria and start to feel better fairly quickly.

Try to eat a healthy diet and drink LOTS of water - also when taking antibiotics it is a good idea to take a good pro-biotic or atleast eat natural yoghurt - the antibiotics will kill 'bacteria' good and bad - so you need to try to keep things balanced.

There are some very knowledgeable folks here - feel free to post as much as you want - sometimes just being in-touch with others who have/had lyme can reduce the anxiety a great deal.

Best Wishes - gorbs x

[patsy10]

Wonko gave some excellent information.  I would suggest you read and learn as much as you can.  Is the specialist a doctor who specializes in lyme?

[wonko]

Welcome, and sorry about your diagnosis.

Lyme can be a straight-forward diagnosis with an effective cure in the form of a single course of antibiotics.  The sooner it's caught, the better.  

In cases where it goes many months, years, decades, without a proper diagnosis, and/or when the person has not just Lyme but other tick-borne co-infections, the prognosis and treatment become far more complicated.

Let's hope for now that you are in the earlier group, where the diagnosis is soon enough after infection and without co-infection that treatment will be fast and effective.  In that case, I hope that your doctor gives you 3 weeks MINIMUM of antibiotic therapy.  Since you haven't been sick for all that long, you have a good chance of responding well to antibiotics.  (In late-stage cases, treatment makes the person more sick through a "Herxheimer reaction.")

There is a yellow button up and to the left for this site's "Health Pages," which you may wish to browse.  The ILADS (International Lyme And Associated Diseases Society) site, which you can easily find doing an internet search, is also a wealth of information.

Should you be worried about chronic Lyme, which again I truly hope you have avoided, I would also suggest borrowing "Cure Unknown" by P. Weintraub from your library, and/or finding a copy of "Under Our Skin," a documentary.  Both the book and film have easy-to-find sites with more online info.

Again, sorry to hear about your diagnosis, but really Lyme caught (relatively) quickly versus late-stage should be thought of as two different illnesses, and the former is often effectively and completely treatable.  The lapse of two months in your case is longer than ideal, but hopefully short enough that you and your doctor can wipe it out.

Chronic Lyme is a strongly polarized subject in the medical community, and a confusing nightmare for patients.  I mention that not to be scary or negative, just as a fact that you may encounter if you research the subject further.