lyme disease on the rise in VA

[hopefulhiker]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040703716.html?nav=most_emailed

[warraghiyagey]

Lemon Disease on the Rise in Detroit. . .

[Chaco Taco]

Lots of cases of Lyme last year. Found 14 ticks on me while eatting lunch on Skyline Drive

[Pedaling Fool]

That was a crappy article. First off they perpetuate the myth that you WILL see the Bullseye mark if you're infected. NOT ALWAYS TRUE.

Then they leave you hanging with this at the end of the article:

"The blood test for Lyme disease came back negative, but his doctor suspected that that was the problem and prescribed the normal three-week course of antibiotics.

But after three weeks, I didn't feel particularly better," said Falk, who spends a lot of time outdoors at his Davidsonville home. "I couldn't go out. I couldn't exercise even a little bit. It was like somebody had taken my battery out.

He went to a Lyme disease specialist, who said he should consider an extended course of antibiotics. But Falk's brother, an emergency room doctor, persuaded him that spending months on antibiotics wasn't the answer.

Seven months later, without additional antibiotics, Falk feels fully recovered, but he worries about encountering another black-legged nymph this season."

So what are they saying, if the first round of treatment is ineffective, just wait and you'll be fine (and disregard anything a lyme disease specialist says).


.

[Blissful]

SNP is terrible - we got ticks just this past weekend at the cabin with our teens. Very bad out there already and its only April. I even got a tick on me in early March when I went hiking there.

[Skyline]

There are many opinions, even among the professionals, about lyme disease. The test is only sometimes accurate. The supposedly tell-tale red bullseye only appears some of the time. The other symptoms of lyme could be any number of other things, but it could be lyme! The diagnosis and prognosis are difficult to render.

It is difficult to know what to believe.

IMHO the best course to take is, if you spend a lot of time outdoors walking through grasses and other plant forms that come in contact with your body, is to assume you have been visited by one or more ticks. Assume you have been bitten by at least one whether you've noticed that red bullseye or not. Assume that bite has infected you with lyme. And, assume you can be infected in successive years.

FWIW I have had the bullseye a couple times, and the other more common symptoms of lyme--but not always coinciding. Once per year, in the Fall, my doc prescribes a 20-day round of Doxycycline for me because he knows my risk factors. So far, I've remained relatively healthy despite mountain hiking, backpacking, camping, doing volunteer maintenance, and working outdoors in the valley a lot each year. This is just one anecdote, but it works for me and I think the doc (who is also a hiker) has weighed the issue of immunity vs. need and finds this once-a-year regimen is an acceptable risk.

Advice: Rather than follow my routine just because it seems to work for me . . . find a good lyme-knowledgeable professional and propose this as one of several solutions you come up with together. Be honest and thorough about your health history, and the amount of time you spend in tick and lyme environments. Lyme can be absolutely debillitating for some folks, and those of us with a good chance of exposure need to take it seriously.

[FritztheCat]

Wife got lyme last year at a local campground. No bullseye mark. She had no idea why she felt so bad but some of the symptoms she had described to me sounded like some of the stuff I was reading here on Whiteblaze. So I told her she needed to get a lyme test done.

The first couple of doctors she went to here in Virginia Beach knew nothing about lyme. She had to go to a specialist just for the blood test. Apparently there are two tests and the first one was negative but the second one was positive. Even then, the doc's didn't know for sure if she had lyme. They prescribed her 3 weeks of antibiotics and it wasn't until the second to last day of that three week period that she started feeling better.

She's not ready to go camping again yet. I can't blame her though. Lyme is some scary stuff.

[Jeff]

Has anyone heard more about a Lymes vaccine? Thought I read about one in testing.

[gravityman]

It was pulled off because of serious side effects. It was being given out around 2002 if I remember, but pulled by 2005ish...