ticks

[Vanessa]

Hi:
Have any of you had Lyme disease? What symptoms alerted you to this.
And was your doctor able to identify it after one test or more?

[Angelina]

My mother had it. She was able to tell from the typical bull's eye mark the bite caused. Poor thing...she was on very strong antibiotics for a while, but it all cleared up and she is ok now. :)

Angela

[Gilgamesh37]

My mother went undiagnosed for we think roughly 14 years. Even when they were narrowing in on the diagnosis, she had several negative tests before finally getting a positive one. As you probably know, the false negative percentage in Lyme tests is incredibly high, approaching 50% IIRC. If you think you may have it but are testing negative, ask your doctor to send a sample to the lab at University of New York Stony Brook, who are the preeminent experts in Lyme testing.

[clairea]

There are blood tests for Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses. However, my understanding is that these take quite some time to run (I believe 10-14 days), and that if you are suspected of having a tick-born illness most doctors will go ahead and put you on an appropriate antibiotic while waiting for the tick titer to come back. And, as gilgamesh mentioned, the false negative rate is really high. I know this is what my mother was told when she was suspected of having a tick-borne illness. She had 2 negative tick titers, but cleared up after several weeks on antibiotics. They never did decide what was wrong with her.

[TwinMom]

Both of my 7 yo daughters have been treated for Lyme's within the past year. We live in an area where we have lots of deer ticks.

One DD had the bull's eye rash.

The other DD did not, but she exhibited these symptoms - intense headache (she never gets headaches), body aches, and mild fever (99-100.5) that knocked her out (typically she doesn't slow down until her fever is at 103+).

Due to where we live and that I have pulled ticks off of all of us, they opted to treat just in case it was Lyme's. Better safe than sorry - I am so grateful that our drs were willing to do that.

Both DD's did not have the Lyme's test since it takes so long to get the results, which are often inconclusive, that by the time the results would come back they would be on the antibiotics for 2 weeks. What's the point for a high $ test that wouldn't effect the outcome on early stage Lyme's...my feeling and our drs.

They each had a course of 3 weeks antibiotics at a HIGH (adult) dosage. No more symptoms and let's just say I hate ticks more than ever before.

Are you having symptoms?

[615bride]

My sister had it. We grew up on LI right near Stony Brook. She never had the tell-tale bullseye as far as we know.....

[NewMrsG]

My daughter had it right around her first birthday (her pediatrician's youngest patient to date :( ). She had the bullseye - luckily. Our pediatrician told us that 30% of people exhibit no symptoms at all.

[Kristilyn1]

My oldest just had it this summer.

First off--we never even saw a tick or a bite. He suddenly came down with a high fever for 3 days and was very lethargic. He then started having joint pain and some headaches. The doctor agreed to do a lyme test but felt it was a fairly unneccesary precaution. 6 days after that, he developed a ring rash on his arm. The day after that, he had rings all over his arms and legs. At that point they started the antibiotics and 3 days later we got his test back--it was positive. He has been fine since, but did, just last week have a severe reaction to poison ivy that required a course of steroids to get rid of and of course in my Lyme Disease obsessed mind---it's because of that. I'm willing to not be hysterical, but admit that I'm watching him closely for any other funky illnesses. When you start talking to people---I run into people just about every week that have had lyme...it really is very prevalent around here.

Kristi