style="margin:20px; margin-top:5px; ">
Quote:
Originally Posted by auntybiotic  I was wondering if you can tell me what treatment your daughter recieved for the lyme disease, and for how long. What kind of testing diagnosed it?
Thanks, |
I can only say possible lyme, it's a long story and I don't remember all of it exactly because it's been confusing but here it is if you want to know. My daughter became ill with a flu like something while in France Jan 2007. She was still sick though somewhat better when she returned after 2½ weeks there so we thought she would continue to improve. After she was home a week or two she was running a fever again so we went to the doctor but no diagnosis, they just assumed she had flu and suggested it might be true influenza. She improved somewhat after awhile but wasn't really better so in March she was back at the doctor where they ran more tests, one came back possibly positive for Lyme so they sent for further testing. What they said was that while it "looked like a positive Lyme test" they didn't think it was. She did have a badly infected throat (not strep though) so they treated with
doxycycline for 2 weeks. I just don't remember what the test was because it's been so long.
Over the next months she started to suffer from anxiety and depression which was totally un-like her. She went from being on the deans list at college to flunking her classes because she couldn't concentrate. We thought she'd do better as her physical symptoms improved but the mental ones kept getting worse little by little. Finally in Oct 2007 I took her back to the doctor in hopes of finding out why the illness she'd had so long before had been causing her so many problems. They ran some routine blood work and said that her depression/anxiety needed to be treated no matter what the cause and that's when the
Lexapro came in.
I wasn't satisfied with just that, I had her test results from March sent and took her to an infectious disease specialist who basically said that because all her current symptoms were "mental not physical" there was nothing he could test for but that she'd had a positive Lyme test in March, he assured us it had been positive. He ran another Lyme test that came back negative, I don't remember which one.
I made an appointment to see a psychiatrist to oversee her meds, not trusting the GP all that much. It was the psychiatrist that recognized her symptoms as Lyme related especially because of her positive earlier test. Had we known in March that the test really was positive we certainly would have followed up the 2 weeks of antibiotics but we just didn't know.
The psychiatrist treated her with 30 days of doxycycline in Dec 2007 and she improved a great deal during that time. Unfortunately she was also on Lex so it was hard to know if it was the Lex or the Doxy.
She has had an additional 30 days on Doxy in June 2008 while tapering off Lex. She is now off Lex and doing very well. We don't really know if she really had Lymes or if it was just a nasty virus with long lasting results.
I know it's a long story but it's been a really confusing journey that I hope is about over. If she has more problems I think we'll have to find a good Lyme Literate doctor. The best one in the area isn't taking new patients.