don't give up

Well fellow lymies, My neck is finally starting to go down after 7 months of IV treatment, its down to 20 1/4" in diamater it was almost 24 in back in march of 09, my glands under my arms are still swollen. everybody still ask me if im in rut............lol. im still hurting on my joints and wonder if they will ever be 100%. but im not giving up!!!!!!!!!!......here is something kinda interesting well i thought it was, I was watching a video last night about field dressing a deer and the guy started talking about lyme disease being in the blood of the deer and if you live in a state where lyme is high you should take proper precaution and use gloves and a mask and not get any blood on you. if this is true and you can get lyme from the blood of a deer then does that mean it could be past from humans just like aids?   just thought i would throw that out their.  any thoughts?...........time for my IV

[wonko]

Dunno about the deer blood--I'm an indoors person myself--but gloves sound like a smart idea all around.

I agree about not giving up, my treatment has been on the slow side but the benefits were worth the wait.

[lesnbek]

nice to know everyone here hunts i just take them out with my vehicles but i live in pa to where deer are everywhere and lyme to- I am glad to hear your neck is going down take care

[gorbybelle]

if the deer carry lyme bacteria in their blood - I wonder if anyone is working on a lyme disease vaccine.

[wonko]

gorbybelle,

There was a failed Lyme vaccine made in the past.  I think this is another area of polarized opinions, I believe the official reason given for pulling the vaccine was poor sales, but there is speculation that people were becoming infected from it.

I honestly don't recall the details, so research this to confirm, but to my knowledge only a few people ever got the vaccine, and they were mostly park/widelife workers.  Yet to date, the standard labs (Quest, Labcorp) discard the Western blot bands that would show up in uninfected vaccinated people.  Ingenex does include those bands, one of the reasons why they are the preferred lab.

Deer are interesting, as they emit tick-attracting oils from behind the ears but they are themselves immune to Lyme.  The deer do not actually suffer from the infection as other animals (as us!) do.  There are Lyme-preventative deer stations that bait the deer to rub against surfaces with tick-killing agents.  I don't know how widely used they are, but sounds like a good idea to me.