Do I even have a disease....

One of the toughest parts about lymes is that it doesn't really exist. There are many strains, eight or so co-infections and incredibly different manifestations of the bugs living in your body. My symptoms were extreme fatigue (in most lymes patients), confusion, emotional distress, crazy heart problems, night sweats, headaches, etc. I was first diagnosed with depression, then mono, then heart problems - I was going to be put on beta blockers and discussions were ensuing about a pace maker. But a year later, I was brought to a specialty clinic in Hyde Park, NY, the doc diagnosed me with lymes and instead of major cardiac surgery, I went on antibiotics and haven't really been off them since.

The hard part is that some people have never heard of lymes - there are doctors who don't even believe in it. The whole southern US doesn't know it exists and nobody really knows how to treat it. So, your left stuck. Often times symptoms present themselves as other diseases (there is research going on now about the correlation between lymes and ALS - as in lymes causes ALS... Interesting.). And I never had the "bullseye" and with no definitive diagnostic test, it's hard to be 100% sure. With little research being done and even less consensus on how to treat lymes - it leaves serious questions in my mind. And when you are fighting a disease you don't really believe in with a regimen that your not sure is going to work... it's exhausting and counter productive to the healing process. My mind needs to be fully engaged in getting better - right now, it's still lingering on the edges of doubt. Is intravenous the answer? Are the other 6 medications I'm on going to help? Do I even really have lymes? Even my father the other day asked if it were possible that I had chronic fatigue and not lymes.

Treating lymes right now is like closing your eyes and throwing darts. You try a medication or two for a couple of months or years and if your symptoms go away, you come off it. Then you wait and see if you stay well - if you don't, you go back on meds (sometimes different ones or just a different combination) and try again. So, that's what I've been doing for the last 2.5 years. Trying different regimen to see if I'll ever be able to be anti-biotic free for more than 6months for the rest of my life.

Right now, the jury is still out. But I do believe I have lymes, I believe this treatment is going to work and I am applying for a job at Outward Bound for the spring in hopes that it work out this time around. But really, we need more research, we need a vaccine and we need the medical community to become more lymeliterate.