Aa
Is this worth looking into...
I have a question about Lymes and Anxiety... I have had anxiety all my life! On and off of course and am stable more often that not. I've been on zoloft since for about 15 years and its worked very well me. About 3 months ago i had a relapse in my anxiety after some stressors, the flu and not taking my medication properly. I immediately got back on my meds and went back to my counselor. However have not seen substaintial results.
So one thought in my head is, thinking back to a time when I got bit by a deer tick about 8 months-a year ago. The more I think about how severe my anxiety is I wonder if I have lymes? What do I have to do to get the ball rolling to get checked? Because I know that testing can be unreliable. I would like to go see a lymes specialist.
Any feeback would greatly be appreciated!!!!!
Thank You
So one thought in my head is, thinking back to a time when I got bit by a deer tick about 8 months-a year ago. The more I think about how severe my anxiety is I wonder if I have lymes? What do I have to do to get the ball rolling to get checked? Because I know that testing can be unreliable. I would like to go see a lymes specialist.
Any feeback would greatly be appreciated!!!!!
Thank You
If you have any questions about what I wrote earlier in this thread----
"When he has you get a blood test for the presence of Lyme disease, would you make note of the lab it's sent to and what tests they perform.
You can do that easily by just asking for a photocopy of your lab request form. They have to comply. It's yours. :) Or they will give you a carbon copy of it.
Barring that when you get the results back please ask for a copy of the report. I can't tell you how important it is that people get copies of all lab reports. Not just because the people here are 'nosy' (grin) but for your own sake. As you learn more and more about Lyme you'll see why copies of everything is important."
Perhaps you didn't see it. So, hoping you'll find out what kind of test/what lab performed it.
"When he has you get a blood test for the presence of Lyme disease, would you make note of the lab it's sent to and what tests they perform.
You can do that easily by just asking for a photocopy of your lab request form. They have to comply. It's yours. :) Or they will give you a carbon copy of it.
Barring that when you get the results back please ask for a copy of the report. I can't tell you how important it is that people get copies of all lab reports. Not just because the people here are 'nosy' (grin) but for your own sake. As you learn more and more about Lyme you'll see why copies of everything is important."
Perhaps you didn't see it. So, hoping you'll find out what kind of test/what lab performed it.
Thank you.. You guys are so kind and helpful...Its so nice to have people willing to help out :-)..
So I met with my new PCP, he was great.. Very knowledgeable, caring and willing to take the time out to get the whole story. He suggested doing the lymes test, then if it comes back positive treat it obviously. He said if it comes back negative he would put me on two weeks of Doxycyline and if I see improvement within those two weeks would continue with another 4 weeks of it.
I told him that I may want to see a Lyme's specialist and he said he personal doesn't think its necessary but he would refer me to anyone I would feel comfortable with. So my plan is to do the blood work with this doctor and see what the result is most likely go see the ID Doc whether its negative or positive..
What do you guys think? Any input.
Thanks in advance.
So I met with my new PCP, he was great.. Very knowledgeable, caring and willing to take the time out to get the whole story. He suggested doing the lymes test, then if it comes back positive treat it obviously. He said if it comes back negative he would put me on two weeks of Doxycyline and if I see improvement within those two weeks would continue with another 4 weeks of it.
I told him that I may want to see a Lyme's specialist and he said he personal doesn't think its necessary but he would refer me to anyone I would feel comfortable with. So my plan is to do the blood work with this doctor and see what the result is most likely go see the ID Doc whether its negative or positive..
What do you guys think? Any input.
Thanks in advance.
The Guidelines were written by an MD (and since added to by other MDs) who are ILADS-type docs: they understand Lyme to be a complex disease that is often not killed off by a few weeks of doxycycline.
The other side of the argument is held by IDSA-type docs. Infectious Disease Society of America = IDSA. IDSA has been around a long time and is a voluntary group for MDs to belong to. Over time, such a group can become a good place for the collected wisdom of infectious disease specialists, and so other docs naturally turn to such a group and their recommended treatments as a good source of reliable information. After all, who knows better about an infectious disease than an infectious disease doctor!
It's logical and it usually works, but sometimes things go awry. In this case, Lyme is such a recently-recognized disease that in the fumbling around of discovery and analysis, some things were concluded as fact that were not entirely accurate. Normally, new data will be used to update the rules of the road for diagnosis and treatment, and thus progress occurs.
Unfortunately, progress came so fast in Lyme that the 'discoverers' of Lyme disease are still practicing medicine and are still high up in the IDSA pantheon of Those Who Are Correct, and the standards in place at IDSA have not changed as understanding of Lyme has progressed. Science moves at a much faster clip now than it did just a few decades because of all the new diagnostic tools and meds docs have now, but human alas do not always keep pace.
It's human nature to cling to what one believed in one's younger years, and the IDSA docs appear to be living that approach. They believe Lyme is rare, hard to get, and easy to cure with a couple weeks of doxy, but since they decided that, new research has shown than Lyme has particular characteristics that allow it hide from the human immune system, and so it can persistent after the two-weeks-of-doxy treatment except perhaps in the very earliest diagnoses .... yet many of us never see the tick or get a rash, and so we can be infected and not have the history that an IDSA doc relies on.
Also, the IDSA docs are not tuned in to co-infections, which are diseases completely unrelated to Lyme, but about half the time the Lyme ticks also carry one or more of these: babesiosis, bartonella, rickettsia, and some others. These infections need separate testing and treatment from Lyme, but the IDSA docs aren't up to speed on that.
Thus arose ILADS: International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society. The ILADS docs have kept observing and learning, and have saved many of us from lives of misery. Thus a split in the medical community. The original IDSA people think the more progressive ILADS people are quacks.
Like many organizations, IDSA has formulated the distilled wisdom of its members into diagnostic and treatment guidelines that other docs, including those who are not infectious disease specialists, are comfortable in relying on: after all, who knows better about infectious disease than an infectious disease group of docs?
This approach usually works, but Lyme is a newly emerging disease, just as AIDS was a few decades ago. I remember seeing one of the high-up docs from the CDC go on TV when AIDS was first recognized and everyone was panicking, thinking it could be passed along by a handshake or a sneeze, just like the flu. This doc, suitable attired in long white coast, went on a national news conference to tell people to settle down, that you could ONLY get AIDS if you were (1) gay or (2) Haitian. These were the two groups in which AIDS had been recognized at that time. This is utterly ridiculous on its face: bacteria don't care who you spend time with.
Sadly, Lyme has gone through something similar: IDSA says you can get Lyme only in the Northeastern US and some isolated areas in the Northwest, and that two weeks of doxy will fix you up no matter how long you have been infected, and this disregards all the research occuring in the last few decades, as well as the common sense observation that ticks can't read maps and don't know where they are 'allowed' to live.
Lyme is everywhere, but the IDSA is still stuck on stupid, to be perfectly blunt. The IDSA guidelines are however still respected by docs in other specialties, because that's how medicine works. If a doc needs to know the best way to do heart surgery, he asks a heart surgeon. Ditto with infectious diseases.
We are at a tipping point, however, and pretty soon (but not soon enough) the sheer weight of the evidence against the IDSA position will cause it to collapse. But in the meantime, the rest of us are out here trying to figure out what's up and how to get well.
So to answer your question: "you're saying that some doctors don't treat as much as the guidelines say?" More accurately, the IDSA docs continue to treat as the IDSA guidelines say, and refuse to treat more aggressively as the ILADS guidelines say.
IDSA docs often think ILADS docs are committing malpractice, and there are some ILADS-leaning docs who are too far out there for my taste. But an ILADS doc accurately diagnosed and treated me, after a bunch of other docs (including at least one infectious disease doc) just shrugged. I was terrible ill, and none of them could figure it out. One of those docs had the grace to say, "I know you are ill, but I just don't know what it is." All the rest of them blew it off.
So there's the loooong story. Whew.
The other side of the argument is held by IDSA-type docs. Infectious Disease Society of America = IDSA. IDSA has been around a long time and is a voluntary group for MDs to belong to. Over time, such a group can become a good place for the collected wisdom of infectious disease specialists, and so other docs naturally turn to such a group and their recommended treatments as a good source of reliable information. After all, who knows better about an infectious disease than an infectious disease doctor!
It's logical and it usually works, but sometimes things go awry. In this case, Lyme is such a recently-recognized disease that in the fumbling around of discovery and analysis, some things were concluded as fact that were not entirely accurate. Normally, new data will be used to update the rules of the road for diagnosis and treatment, and thus progress occurs.
Unfortunately, progress came so fast in Lyme that the 'discoverers' of Lyme disease are still practicing medicine and are still high up in the IDSA pantheon of Those Who Are Correct, and the standards in place at IDSA have not changed as understanding of Lyme has progressed. Science moves at a much faster clip now than it did just a few decades because of all the new diagnostic tools and meds docs have now, but human alas do not always keep pace.
It's human nature to cling to what one believed in one's younger years, and the IDSA docs appear to be living that approach. They believe Lyme is rare, hard to get, and easy to cure with a couple weeks of doxy, but since they decided that, new research has shown than Lyme has particular characteristics that allow it hide from the human immune system, and so it can persistent after the two-weeks-of-doxy treatment except perhaps in the very earliest diagnoses .... yet many of us never see the tick or get a rash, and so we can be infected and not have the history that an IDSA doc relies on.
Also, the IDSA docs are not tuned in to co-infections, which are diseases completely unrelated to Lyme, but about half the time the Lyme ticks also carry one or more of these: babesiosis, bartonella, rickettsia, and some others. These infections need separate testing and treatment from Lyme, but the IDSA docs aren't up to speed on that.
Thus arose ILADS: International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society. The ILADS docs have kept observing and learning, and have saved many of us from lives of misery. Thus a split in the medical community. The original IDSA people think the more progressive ILADS people are quacks.
Like many organizations, IDSA has formulated the distilled wisdom of its members into diagnostic and treatment guidelines that other docs, including those who are not infectious disease specialists, are comfortable in relying on: after all, who knows better about infectious disease than an infectious disease group of docs?
This approach usually works, but Lyme is a newly emerging disease, just as AIDS was a few decades ago. I remember seeing one of the high-up docs from the CDC go on TV when AIDS was first recognized and everyone was panicking, thinking it could be passed along by a handshake or a sneeze, just like the flu. This doc, suitable attired in long white coast, went on a national news conference to tell people to settle down, that you could ONLY get AIDS if you were (1) gay or (2) Haitian. These were the two groups in which AIDS had been recognized at that time. This is utterly ridiculous on its face: bacteria don't care who you spend time with.
Sadly, Lyme has gone through something similar: IDSA says you can get Lyme only in the Northeastern US and some isolated areas in the Northwest, and that two weeks of doxy will fix you up no matter how long you have been infected, and this disregards all the research occuring in the last few decades, as well as the common sense observation that ticks can't read maps and don't know where they are 'allowed' to live.
Lyme is everywhere, but the IDSA is still stuck on stupid, to be perfectly blunt. The IDSA guidelines are however still respected by docs in other specialties, because that's how medicine works. If a doc needs to know the best way to do heart surgery, he asks a heart surgeon. Ditto with infectious diseases.
We are at a tipping point, however, and pretty soon (but not soon enough) the sheer weight of the evidence against the IDSA position will cause it to collapse. But in the meantime, the rest of us are out here trying to figure out what's up and how to get well.
So to answer your question: "you're saying that some doctors don't treat as much as the guidelines say?" More accurately, the IDSA docs continue to treat as the IDSA guidelines say, and refuse to treat more aggressively as the ILADS guidelines say.
IDSA docs often think ILADS docs are committing malpractice, and there are some ILADS-leaning docs who are too far out there for my taste. But an ILADS doc accurately diagnosed and treated me, after a bunch of other docs (including at least one infectious disease doc) just shrugged. I was terrible ill, and none of them could figure it out. One of those docs had the grace to say, "I know you are ill, but I just don't know what it is." All the rest of them blew it off.
So there's the loooong story. Whew.
From the ILADS site:
THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A STUDY DEMONSTRATING THAT 30 DAYS OF ANTIBIOTIC TREATMENT CURES CHRONIC LYME DISEASE.
HOWEVER THERE IS A PLETHORA OF DOCUMENTATION IN THE US AND EUROPEAN MEDICAL LITERATURE DEMONSTRATING BY HISTOLOGY AND CULTURE TECHNIQUES THAT SHORT COURSES OF ANTIBIOTIC TREATMENT FAIL TO ERADICATE THE LYME SPIROCHETE.
SHORT TREATMENT COURSES HAVE RESULTED IN UPWARDS OF A 40% RELAPSE RATE, ESPECIALLY IF TREATMENT IS DELAYED.
(The caps are their's not mine. I'm not yelling. LOL)
THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A STUDY DEMONSTRATING THAT 30 DAYS OF ANTIBIOTIC TREATMENT CURES CHRONIC LYME DISEASE.
HOWEVER THERE IS A PLETHORA OF DOCUMENTATION IN THE US AND EUROPEAN MEDICAL LITERATURE DEMONSTRATING BY HISTOLOGY AND CULTURE TECHNIQUES THAT SHORT COURSES OF ANTIBIOTIC TREATMENT FAIL TO ERADICATE THE LYME SPIROCHETE.
SHORT TREATMENT COURSES HAVE RESULTED IN UPWARDS OF A 40% RELAPSE RATE, ESPECIALLY IF TREATMENT IS DELAYED.
(The caps are their's not mine. I'm not yelling. LOL)
If you're talking about the ILADS Guidelines (just so I'm not confused) not being followed------- the answer is " most ID doctors will follow the IDSA Guidelines instead of the ILADS Guidelines".
So:
ILADS Guidelines ----- treat as long as needed to achieve remission. That can sometimes be months or years. And it often involves high doses and/or two antibiotics at the same time.
IDSA Guidelines ---- (Infectious Disease docs) mandate times for dosing from one doxycyline to perhaps up to 30 days. And that's ONLY if you have a bullseye rash, which only about 50 % of people do.
(That's an oversimplification of the IDSA treatment but just to show the difference.)
Another try: :)
ILADS Guidelines (Probably the best)
IDSA Guidelines (I wouldn't!)
So:
ILADS Guidelines ----- treat as long as needed to achieve remission. That can sometimes be months or years. And it often involves high doses and/or two antibiotics at the same time.
IDSA Guidelines ---- (Infectious Disease docs) mandate times for dosing from one doxycyline to perhaps up to 30 days. And that's ONLY if you have a bullseye rash, which only about 50 % of people do.
(That's an oversimplification of the IDSA treatment but just to show the difference.)
Another try: :)
ILADS Guidelines (Probably the best)
IDSA Guidelines (I wouldn't!)
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