I got new for you if I even think I have Lyme and a simple dose of Doxy will eliminate my anxiety I'm taking the Doxy.
Just to update my situation:
I had the blood test and it was negative.
I had the bullseye about 5" diameter about 3 weeks ago now.
I'm heading back to Thailand where they will know practically nothing about this disease.
So, hopefully i continue having none of the symptoms.
But it's been a learning experience.
I didn't take the one dioxcylene like I should have.
I listened to those on here who said to go to a doctor.
It took over a week to get the results.
By that time it's too late to take the one pill and everyone (PA deer hunters galore) around here tells me to just take the round of antibiotics.
That's what they do.
I have to agree with Tdozski or whatever his name is.
Too many people take antibiotics for every little thing and it is going to stop working some day.
I rarely take them.
Don't like pills.
Don't let your fears stand in the way of your dreams
I'm not allowed to self prescribe antibiotics. A doc should say a tick crawling on your arm does not justify Doxy. And a person should listen. The vast majority of antibiotic resistance comes from the person not taking the full regime of antibiotics, and then the more resistant bacteria continues to grow and then you get sick again, and have created a problem, not the doc, or the drug company. The person made the problem. Just don't be stupid. The drug companies are constantly working on adjusting antibiotics to continue to kill the bad guys. It's unlikely that antibiotics will not stop working anytime in our or our grandchildrens lifetime. In my humble opinion as a health care professional, antibiotics have saved more lives than any other medical advance, ever. Just follow your doc's directions. Otherwise it becomes a Darwin award.
Originally Posted by jpolk84
which is exactly why letting you carry it is not something a dr should do.
my qualifications are you made a statement in this thread that reading any number of perfectly legit internet sources on the topic will show to be false. i need no further qualifications. get over yourself.
and there you go once again making a statement about what antibiotic resistance is that is not accurate.
Some research suggests that 10% of AT hikers get Lyme. Many hikers, if not most, were found with ticks on them. Shelter camps have less ticks on them than the trails do. Also, you've got to be especially careful if you charge into the woods looking for firewood.
The days of hiking the trail in shorts are over. Now, its premethrin on long pants and long shirt, 25% deet on any exposed skin, and 100% deet on bandanna, hat, and shoes.
Lyme is the least of your worries.
1. You could get EEE from a mosquito byte. It is often fatal.
2. You could get Chagas from the kissing-beetle. It's pandemic in NC as a lot of Brazilians have settled there and brought it along.
3. Ticks transmit other nasties besides lyme. They include:Babesia, Baronella, Ehrlichia, RMSF, and Anaplosana. Often, when you pick up Lyme, you get a co-infection with one of these at the same time.
4. You could get hanta virus from mice dust in the lean-two.
I pulled off the road up in NH in the summer to check the car. I notice the road shoulder is moving. I look closer and it most have been 10,000 ticks, all marching in unison toward me. Yikes!
You can make up some tick-tubes to put in/near the shelters. They are cotton balls soaked in premethrin inside a paper tube. The mice grab the cotton for their nests. Their ticks then die and you are exposed to less ticks.
Spray camping areas with Bifen II, Talstar, Onslaught, or Premetherin Pro. (From http://www.pestproducts.com/ticks2.htm)
Carying Doxy doesn't help much. You need professional care for most of the above. If you catch it early, it's several months of treatment. If caught late, you may or may not be able to make a full recovery.
What research suggests this? Curious if they differentiate between AT hikers and those who hike a lot but not on the AT, how they count people who work in their yards, and how researchers have found ticks on most hikers.
fiddlehead,
Often the blood tests don't show Lyme until your body has had enough time to build up the indicating markers (anti-bodies).
I had three test before a positive one.
Same with my BIL, he had the classic ring rash (erythema migrans) but didn't test positive for over two months.
Early antibiotic treatment is the preferred method of treatment. Waiting for symptoms to manifest is not recommended as the disease is harder to treat once established. It's not as easy as getting symptoms a year later and then taking some antibiotics to take care of the problem.
Please find a "Lyme Literate" doctor, one who is up on the current care standards for Lyme.
"Chainsaw" GA-ME 2011
This link agrees with your assessment.
http://www.webmd.com/arthritis/lyme-disease-test
Simple logic would seem to show that by the time the test comes back positive, it is too late to stop the disease. What am I missing? I am no expert. The 2 prevailing attitudes seem to be don't take the pill until it is too late and take the pill just in case. In the mean time the debate over antibiotic resistance rages on. I thought the "how many ticks embedded" thread put that debate to bed. A large percentage of hikers never see the attached tick and therefore would not have taken the carried pill. A carried pill contributes nothing to anything. The new suggestion is just plain silly. Spray shelters? The trail is a greater risk. How about we just spray the entire planet? How about we look to ourselves instead? Given that many get the disease without ever seeing the tick and given that the disease is no laughing matter, it would seem that keeping ticks off hikers would be the best plan. Being proactive via doxy if you find an attached tick is a personal choice. Telling people what to do based on exaggerated statistics is ignorant at best and presumptuous at worse.
Now I wait for my rebuke from the lord of the technicality. I said I was done with this thread. I obviously lied. I just thought the embedded tick discussion squished this debate.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. - Abraham Lincoln
i hike in shorts, i wear none of that stuff. i see plenty of other hikers out in shorts too. dont know what they may or may not have on them chemical wise, but i rarely have encountered anyone who was obviously doused in chemicals (though i have met a few).
sorry, maybe "those days" are over for you and for a few others, but like much else discussed here, the reality of what goes on out on the trail is way different than what some people say here.
can you cite anything that backs this claim up? thats not as argumentative a question as i may sound, but i have literally never read or heard that from any serious resource. if such a resource exists, i'm seriously all ears. or eyes as it may be.
but no, what someone told you their DR said (or even what your DR told you for that matter) is not a resource.
depends on what you mean by "stop." stop infection with it? obviously. cure it? not at all.
i often think some people are just horribly afraid of getting infected with anything just because the notion of infection is something they are uncomfortable with. our bodies are full of and covered in all manner of microbes. thats just reality.
The disease is harder to treat the longer you wait. At some point, the spirochete will form a bio-film. This in turn blocks the antibiotic. Serrapentase (2g/day) can be used along with the antibiotics to break up this film. Reference: at http://www.tiredoflyme.com/biofilm.html.
I've been bitten a couple of times. The first time, I didn't spot it until symptoms developed. It was a solid month of Doxy. Another time, I caught the little bugger, and started PEN-VK right away and continued for 7 days. I did not develop the disease this time.
I came down with Lyme during my 2009 hike... things hit the fan while going through the Lemon Squeezer. I ended up falling asleep on the side of a road (which I have no real memory of). Thankfully, a hiker came past me, woke me up, and then ended up calling The Mayor. I had a 10 day stay with the Mayor & Co. What great people. I have visited them a few times since my Thru-Hike...
They brought me to town to get the Doxycycline, and within about a week I was nearly fully recovered. They wanted to make sure my health was truly back, so they let me hike out, only to meet me at the end of the day, to make sure I was okay. True trail angels.
"you know a dream like this seems kind of vaguely ludicrous and completely unattainable. And for anybody who's on the downside of advantage and relying purely on courage: It's possible."
is there any actual scientific/medical site that discusses "biofilm" as it relates to lyme disease? not inclined to overly believe someone trying to sell a book.
PEN-VK? never heard of that method of treating lyme disease. if you decided to just dose yourself with random antibiotics of your choosing i would say the fact that you didnt develop lyme disease is a coincidence, and further, you are exactly the sort of problem i am talking about.
It always amazes me that people will believe a load of B.S. they read on the internet written by people who really don't know what they are talking about and because of that will not believe what their health care professional tells them. This thread has done a real disservice to fiddlehead. Here is a person with the classic symptom of Lyme who is afraid to take the medicine he needs because of a load of bogus crap he read here.
fiddlehead has gone to see his DR and, as far as i can tell, is doing what his DR has ordered. or should he ignore his DR and instead take a different course of action, one which, lets be real here, would just be a different "load of bogus crap he read on the internet" just because it would be the load of bogus crap you subscribe to? seems to me that is what you are saying he should do.
theres plenty on the internet, not in this thread, concerning lyme disease i think is nonsense. perhaps you agree with some of it. doesnt make it not nonsense.
Next soapbox please!!
In my job, before I retired, and in my other hobbies, there are a number of activities that could go bad, so for the most part, I prepare for that. If I'm on a sailboat with nearest land 1k miles away, being prepared, even for rare events is often the difference between a great story and one not so great. I have spent my life on and near the shore and have only a few years of experience in the woods but I figure it can't hurt to use the same approach. Some of these maladies can affect much of your future, at least it appears that way. It's uncomfortable to wear treated long pants and sleeves hiking but I will. Certainly doesn't bother me that others think I am being over cautious, they don't have to live in my future so their opinion is probably influenced somewhat from the "I don't really care" perspective. If years from now I find out that I could have been cooler during the hike, ok, it's then a funny story. The other way around, not so much. I have a brother-in-law from Pa who caught lime disease hunting. He treated it fairly early but I guess treatment was not as good years ago and he is ok but left with what I would call arthritis like symptoms. Although his symptoms are not terrible, I would rather be hot for a few months. Not preaching to anyone and I don't have to be right, just what my approach will be.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote