Doctor’s sister ends up with Lyme Disease causing her to research Lyme Disease beyond the ‘official’ perspective.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/lyme-disease—debilitating-illness-3008746

Lyme disease – the debilitating illness which can be a hidden danger of a healthy country walk

Jan 10, 2014 16:23
By Miriam Stoppard

The Mirror’s health columnist Dr Miriam Stoppard knows from her own sister’s experience how draining the condition can be.

My sister lives in south west France where Lyme disease is rife and, as she walks her dogs through deeply wooded
country every day, she exposes herself and them to the risk of picking up the ticks that carry the disease.

In fact, she’s had this nasty infection more than once and it nearly killed one of her dogs.

But it isn’t only in France where Lyme disease may catch up with you or your dog if you walk on ­grassland, particularly where deer roam.

Acute Lyme disease is nearly always nasty with high fever, headaches, rash and nausea. Fatigue is so great that it’s a huge effort to get
about. It can feel like very severe flu, with aches and pains everywhere and sore muscles.

It’s important to see a doctor and get antibiotics because if Lyme disease is misdiagnosed or left untreated, it can go on to something
resembling ­post-viral fatigue syndrome, which may last for months.

My sister’s last bout did seem to drag on for a long time so I looked up the ­literature. It turns out there’s a chronic form of Lyme disease
(post-treatment LD syndrome, or PTLDS), which is difficult to eradicate.

Her long-term symptoms were aching joints, headaches and ­indescribable fatigue that made her miserable and unable to go for her customary
walks. Desperate, she finally consulted a Lyme specialist, a doctor who treats patients with similar symptoms to my sister’s with long-term
antibiotics. Now my sister feels healthy for the first time in a year.

Her experience isn’t unusual, and experts now realise that some people who get Lyme disease go on to develop a chronic illness, even if their
initial ­infection was promptly diagnosed and correctly treated – 10-15% of people who are treated for Lyme disease develop persistent symptoms
of fatigue, muscle pain and inability to concentrate.

Long-term antibiotic therapy for PTLDS is based on the possibility that patients may have hidden reservoirs of the bacterium called
borrelia burgdorferi that causes Lyme disease.

Many people who are infected with it never know they have been bitten by the tiny deer tick that spreads the bacterium.

They may never develop or notice the red rash that can result. Even when it occurs, only 20% are the ­characteristic “bullseye”
of Lyme disease.

Such people may never receive ­treatment in its early stages and end up weeks, months, even years later with the kind of symptoms
that plagued my sister.