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I got it about 5 months after moving to middle TN. I got bit on my back just to the side of the back bone. I didn't know it, I started feel like I had a bad flu and started telling my wife the symptoms and she did a body look, just a look, darn it. She found the nice bullseye about 3 1/2 inches across. I went to the doc and he said that was "probably" what it was and started me on meds. I got better, but was never tested for it. Every since then I have had bouts with trembles and feeling very tired sometimes with no reason to be tired.
I was bitten repeatedly by ticks about 18 years ago when I lived before in TN. (I recently moved back) I had a deer tick that was incorrectly removed from my scalp and then got repeated bites from baby ticks on a foot and a few days later had the bullseye rash on that foot and on top of that found a Lone Star tick in my bellybutton! (I used to walk in the woods alot) I was sick for years with bizare symptoms. I moved out of state and it was many years later that I met someone else who had Lyme disease. She took me to her doctor and lo and behold I was positive for Lyme.
I had one of the worst infections of Lyme the lab had ever seen. It was so bad the lab called my doctor right then telling him to get me on treatment instead of their usual just faxing the results to the office. So yeah I say Lyme is bad in TN but people don't know this because the doctors here do not know how to detect or treat it. I ended up seeking treatment from a doctor in Pennsylvania who specialized in treating rare diseases even though I was living in AZ at the time. I met people from all over the country in his office. Apparently its an issue in many places that Lyme is just not recognized for the problem that it is. Both my parents have also tested positive for Lyme but the TN doctors would only give them two weeks of antibiotics and called it good. They still exhibit symptoms of Lyme and both are constantly sick all the time. So long story short Lyme does exist in TN.
I got that rash when I lived in Florida. I went to the emergency room and they had no idea what it was. (No suprise) That would explain all of my health issues over the past eight years since that rash appeared.
I hate, hate hate, ticks. I never saw one in my life until I started trucking in the USA 3 years ago. I have two dogs with me and my one dog has had Lyme twice in the last 2 years. It's easily treated both in dog and man if caught early. If a tick bite looks infected , IT IS. Go right away to the Dr. and get on a treatment of antibiotics.
I got smart this year and had both my dogs inocculated against Lyme. It's wierd that there is no Vaccine for people. I have never had any problem with ticks in Tn. Some states are just horrible. Before I started to put tick repellent on my dogs they picked up 40 ticks at one rest area in Wi. in about 5 minutes. The whole northeast is just bad. It's weird though, there is hardly any across the border in Canada. But then again we have hardly any Mexicans either.LOL
I hate, hate hate, ticks. I never saw one in my life until I started trucking in the USA 3 years ago. I have two dogs with me and my one dog has had Lyme twice in the last 2 years. It's easily treated both in dog and man if caught early. If a tick bite looks infected , IT IS. Go right away to the Dr. and get on a treatment of antibiotics.
I got smart this year and had both my dogs inocculated against Lyme. It's wierd that there is no Vaccine for people. I have never had any problem with ticks in Tn. Some states are just horrible. Before I started to put tick repellent on my dogs they picked up 40 ticks at one rest area in Wi. in about 5 minutes. The whole northeast is just bad. It's weird though, there is hardly any across the border in Canada. But then again we have hardly any Mexicans either.LOL
There is, or rather was, a Lyme vaccine for humans. Several years after introduction they discovered it caused some people to contract Lyme. My doctor told me he had several patients he was treating for illness caused by the Lyme vaccine. If you are curious as to why Lyme is a problem in some areas you need to do research on Plum Island and read the book Lab 257.
I find it ironic - considering some of these posts - that unfounded hysteria was the reason for the vaccine's demise. In clinical trials involving more than 10,000 people, the vaccine, called LYMErix, was found to confer protective immunity to Borrelia in 76% of adults and 100% of children with only mild or moderate and transient adverse effects. Despite the lack of evidence that the complaints were caused by the vaccine, sales plummeted and LYMErix was withdrawn from the U.S. market by GlaxoSmithKline in February 2002 in the setting of negative media coverage and fears of vaccine side effects.
The original developer of the OspA vaccine at the Max Planck Institute told Nature: "This just shows how irrational the world can be... There was no scientific justification for the first OspA vaccine [LYMErix] being pulled."
Once again, dealing with the FACTS, Tennessee has a pretty low rate of Lyme Disease.
TN has a low rate because the doctors do not know how to test for the disease thus people are just told they have arthritis, fibromyalgia or a virus whenever they complain of symptoms after a tick bite. The doctors here do not understand the disease. I've found health care in this state was sub-standard in many ways and not just with Lyme. Just because the doctors are blind to an illness doesn't mean its not a problem. If they tested everyone with the CORRECT test after they had a tick bite and bullseye rash the Lyme rate would go up dramatically in this state.
Those FACTS you speak of are from a govt entity and we all know just how great the govt is at lying & covering up things and how great they are at protecting the public. Do some reading on the Lyme epidemic and Plum Island.
I find it ironic - considering some of these posts - that unfounded hysteria was the reason for the vaccine's demise. In clinical trials involving more than 10,000 people, the vaccine, called LYMErix, was found to confer protective immunity to Borrelia in 76% of adults and 100% of children with only mild or moderate and transient adverse effects. Despite the lack of evidence that the complaints were caused by the vaccine, sales plummeted and LYMErix was withdrawn from the U.S. market by GlaxoSmithKline in February 2002 in the setting of negative media coverage and fears of vaccine side effects.
You do realize there has been a number of medications deemed safe in clinical trials that have later been found to cause serious health problems and even death in some instances? Just because LYMErix was deemed safe in clinical trials doesn't mean it didn't cause problems many years after people were injected. I can give you my Lyme doctor's contact info if you'd like to call and set him straight on the facts about Lyme disease. He's just a phD in microbiology and has a MD in internal medicine specializing in infectious disease, so obviously he couldn't know what he is talking about even though he had patients who tested positive for Lyme, had the symptoms and had medical documents proving they had received the vaccine.
Normally when I see the Lyme Disease discussions on forums I find the sheer amount of misinformation too sad to comment on. The second hand information filtered through preconceived and ignorant notions does nothing to help anyone. When it comes from someone who needs to constantly talk about the area in a bad way I feel obligated to counter the nonsense with real information. Many parts of TN are lacking in adequate health care because of poverty but there are many towns and cities with excellent care. This is no different than NC or VA or any of the other states surrounding TN. For that matter anyplace that has more rural areas will be similar. Mtneer your disdain for TN has been evident since your unhappy return. From multiple posts here we all get that you hate the place, don't like the people, and don't like your family but the hyperbole is really just not required.
The area I used to live in was considered "Lyme central". It had several research programs, at the various colleges of medicine and universities within a 50 mile range because it was hyperendemic to the area. I've got experience on both side of the treatment picture, physician and patient with Chronic Lyme, as well as watching family, friends and neighbors deal with what some used to call a trickster or impostor disease. To use what happened 2 decades ago in a field where last year is old news is disingenious at best.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mtneer
I was bitten repeatedly by ticks about 18 years ago when I lived before in TN. (I recently moved back) I had a deer tick that was incorrectly removed from my scalp and then got repeated bites from baby ticks on a foot and a few days later had the bullseye rash on that foot and on top of that found a Lone Star tick in my bellybutton! (I used to walk in the woods alot) I was sick for years with bizare symptoms. I moved out of state and it was many years later that I met someone else who had Lyme disease. She took me to her doctor and lo and behold I was positive for Lyme.
Ticks, whatever their size do not *repeatedly* bite, they seek one blood meal and remain in place over a period at least 24 hours long. The bulls-eye rash forms (if one forms) around the bite site. At best one of the ticks was infected. The size of the ticks usually make it impossible to see anything but the adult, the smallest nymph is usually too small to be seen by most people even when engorged and the even smaller larval stage cannot infect. Most people arriving at the doctor come with symptoms of infection without having seen or feeling the tick. The following is a link to a picture showing just how small they are.
I had one of the worst infections of Lyme the lab had ever seen. It was so bad the lab called my doctor right then telling him to get me on treatment instead of their usual just faxing the results to the office.
Nonsense. No lab quantifies the infection level because they do not and cannot test how infected you are. Depending on the test used they usually measure for antibodies that are present in your blood. The longer the infection has existed the more likely all levels of antibodies will be high, this is not unusual and does not require emergency calls from the lab and is not indicative of a greater infection. The more serious infection is one that as gone on for a long time without developing serious antibody levels and it is where most misdiagnosis stems from. 18 years ago even in NY and CT where the most infections occurred there was a great deal of uncertainty in the medical community as to how reliable the simple test was, but often insurance coverage dictated it because it was cheaper. Tests have since been developed with methods not even in existence then. More are showing a great deal of promise for the next few years and should make what are borderline cases now much easier to detect and treat. To act as if somehow the physicians here in TN were incapable at a time when their counterparts in a heavily infected area did not know much better just seems like a continued attempt to denigrate the area you have been complaining about since you returned.
So yeah I say Lyme is bad in TN but people don't know this because the doctors here do not know how to detect or treat it. I ended up seeking treatment from a doctor in Pennsylvania who specialized in treating rare diseases even though I was living in AZ[/color] at the time. I met people from all over the country in his office. Apparently its an issue in many places that Lyme is just not recognized for the problem that it is. Both my parents have also tested positive for Lyme but the TN doctors would only give them two weeks of antibiotics and called it good. They still exhibit symptoms of Lyme and both are constantly sick all the time. So long story short Lyme does exist in TN.
18 years ago the disease had not been detected with any kind of frequency nor had medical treatment yet been discussed outside of the original hot zone. There was a great deal of misinformation in the medical community at the time in the area where there were lot of cases because the disease was still quite new and mimicked a lot of other diseases and syndromes. There wasn't enough research at the time to even know what treatment regime would work best, how long it needed to go on or if IV was better than oral for long term recovery. The specialists still were denying the fact that there might be a chronic form because it was too new to know and many saw people who whined about nonspecific symptoms because that was what was in the news, in turn hiding the few cases that had real symptoms and real problems. No doctor in Tennessee 18 years ago could have known much if anything about the disease or recognized symptoms outside of possibly knowing about the bulls-eye rash from journals, seminars and books.
You further contradict yourself, note your own words in purple. If your parents were tested for it and received antibiotics then how can your claim be valid that all the doctors here are incompetent and don't know how to test for or treat the disease?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mtneer
There is, or rather was, a Lyme vaccine for humans. Several years after introduction they discovered it caused some people to contract Lyme. My doctor told me he had several patients he was treating for illness caused by the Lyme vaccine. If you are curious as to why Lyme is a problem in some areas you need to do research on Plum Island and read the book Lab 257.
There was no documented case of Lyme being contracted from the vaccine, not one. It is a physical impossibility because of what the vaccine is made of. There were however side effects that seemed tied to autoimmune like symptoms, which later turned out to be erroneous and speculation among the researchers was that it likely was more than likely some form of Chronic Lyme. At its best it was effective 75% of the time although even that rate was later considered high because of the criterion used to admit people to the testing phase. The dog vaccine has also had its problems and no other vaccine for any other animal has been successfully made.
As to the Plum Island claims.... its time for that tinfoil hat. Anyone having lived near that part of Long Island or even sailed in the waters of Long Island Sound, like I have, know how far fetched the scenario is. If one understands even rudimentary genetics one can however understand how and why an existing bacterium might suddenly become infectious and even develop multiple strains without resorting to a conspiracy theory.
I find it ironic - considering some of these posts - that unfounded hysteria was the reason for the vaccine's demise. In clinical trials involving more than 10,000 people, the vaccine, called LYMErix, was found to confer protective immunity to Borrelia in 76% of adults and 100% of children with only mild or moderate and transient adverse effects. Despite the lack of evidence that the complaints were caused by the vaccine, sales plummeted and LYMErix was withdrawn from the U.S. market by GlaxoSmithKline in February 2002 in the setting of negative media coverage and fears of vaccine side effects.
The original developer of the OspA vaccine at the Max Planck Institute told Nature: "This just shows how irrational the world can be... There was no scientific justification for the first OspA vaccine [LYMErix] being pulled."
Once again, dealing with the FACTS, Tennessee has a pretty low rate of Lyme Disease.
The same people who cannot understand why "they" didn't have a vaccination right away are the ones that later sanctimoniously decry the lack of safety of vaccines sanctioned by the FDA. They have a Hollywood version of science in mind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mtneer
TN has a low rate because the doctors do not know how to test for the disease thus people are just told they have arthritis, fibromyalgia or a virus whenever they complain of symptoms after a tick bite. The doctors here do not understand the disease. I've found health care in this state was sub-standard in many ways and not just with Lyme. Just because the doctors are blind to an illness doesn't mean its not a problem. If they tested everyone with the CORRECT test after they had a tick bite and bullseye rash the Lyme rate would go up dramatically in this state.
Those FACTS you speak of are from a govt entity and we all know just how great the govt is at lying & covering up things and how great they are at protecting the public. Do some reading on the Lyme epidemic and Plum Island.
Facts: The animals that the bacterial incubators and alternate hosts to the ticks known to carry the disease do not know state or county borders. They can easily hitch rides on camping gear, trailers and people so the disease will continue to spread. TN will see more cases as time goes by because the populations of all of the animals that can carry the disease and acts as reservoirs are present. Recent research indicates more animals than originally thought can carry the 3 strains of the bacterium, so even today's "facts" will evolve and change. Repeating Plum Island over and over does not make it truth.
The FACTS are that many people who claim to have Lyme Disease don't have it by any test that has been developed to date.The FACTS are that many people at the CDC and other government facilities are humans who have families at risk and many are very dedicated to protecting other human beings. Its much easier to be a book author on a "conspiracy" than it is to slog through research and disseminate truth, especially when it isn't glamorous.
Fibromyalgia and other autoimmune diseases have much in common with Chronic Lyme and researchers suspect it may actually be a case of chemicals the body produces in response to the disease as well as environmental causes that cause the symptom picture. Others like Anita's husband's experience come from the kind of care that has been frequently been a big worry for veterans in many states, not just TN. Some people who have undetected or asymptomatic Lyme Disease will have so much damage done by the disease that the treatment sometimes only makes it worse. Lyme will mimic a lot of other diseases at different stages and treatment for those diseases can make things worse. I feel very sorry that the medical establishment she is relying on has let them down, and the current physicians may not be able to undo damage from previous treatment, but it does not by any means represent health care throughout the state.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mtneer
You do realize there has been a number of medications deemed safe in clinical trials that have later been found to cause serious health problems and even death in some instances? Just because LYMErix was deemed safe in clinical trials doesn't mean it didn't cause problems many years after people were injected. I can give you my Lyme doctor's contact info if you'd like to call and set him straight on the facts about Lyme disease. He's just a phD in microbiology and has a MD in internal medicine specializing in infectious disease, so obviously he couldn't know what he is talking about even though he had patients who tested positive for Lyme, had the symptoms and had medical documents proving they had received the vaccine.
Despite the cute winky face the above mixes two completely different things and does not relate to care found in TN which was your original point. Your first 2 sentences indicate you feel there are health problems caused by the vaccine and then your last sentence indicates you think the issue is that they got sick with Lyme in spite of the vaccine. Side effects and incomplete immunity are not the same thing. Calling the doctor will not prove otherwise. The vaccine was known to be 75% effective at best so that means 25% OR MORE of the people who received it would still be likely to be infected if exposed. This was known and publicized at the time the vaccine was released and one of several reasons it was not widely sought after. This has no bearing on the safety of the vaccine or its potential side effects. No medicine to date has been side effect free or been 100% reliable.
Lyme disease has not had the public outcry and support as some other diseases so it has not received the funding to rapidly understand every aspect of it. Many beliefs held in the scientific and medical communities have been changing recently as research brings to light new facts. Chronic Lyme was once thought not to exist, even in places where the disease was rampant, but now is being seriously researched, enough so that there are actually various causes being studied. Even now many well regarded physicians do not believe it is a real physical problem because the results of past research has had such mixed results. Very recently it was determined that some of the bacteria may lie dormant, much like chicken pox/shingles might and might explain some of the more unusual cases. There is indication that the bacteria can be completely gone but chemicals, scars and nerve pathways alterations may result in continued symptoms. Understanding this will allow better care to those who have suffered long term problems but a great deal is still not fully understood. One of the biggest problems has always been that standard testing cannot reliably differentiate between a cured case, a vaccinated and a new case.
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its - possession
it's - contraction of it is
your - possession
you're - contraction of you are
their - possession
they're - contraction of they are
there - referring to a place
loose - opposite of tight
lose - opposite of win
who's - contraction of who is
whose - possession
alot - NOT A WORD
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