I was not familiar at all with Lyme disease until I was diagnosed with it in December 2005. I wish I would have known so I could have gotten the proper treatment in the beginning of my symptoms. So, to make this easy for you to understand just how important it is to get the proper diagnosis and treatment at the first signs of a tick bite, I am sharing my story with you.
I was asked my a well meaning family member: “Didn’t you know it was a tick bite?” So, what if I would have known or not known. I grew up with dogs and being in the woods on camping trips with my family. My Dad hunted and fished and would take us with him each year and we loved being outdoors to explore and be a kid!
We always were pulling ticks off ourselves and our dogs. My parents never knew what a deer tick was either and never educated us on the effects of one biting you. I was a sickly child from the age of 4 and was always sick once a year and down in bed for a month at a time. So, growing up with illness was just a part of my life.
I had a spider bite me in my early 20’s and found out it was a poisonous one called a “brown recluse” here in Florida. The only thing that saved me from a life of misery at that early age was a co-worker who overheard my conversation with a friend at work and she told me what it was and to get on penicillin right away and to call my doctor.
The funny thing is a spider bite and deer tick bite look the same. You get a red ring around the bite area and then your life becomes a living nightmare after about a few weeks of not getting on penicillin. So, I watched the site and unlike a spider bite the red ring went away, so I thought whew! it was not a poisonous bite after all!
It was a month later that I came down with flu like symptoms, so again I did not connect the dots back to the red ring. From there it was a range of crazy things happening in my body as the infection spread in my immune system. My blood pressure dropped down dangerously low, that I would get dizzy and have to lay down for hours. My heart was palpitating and skipping beats. I had a mild heart attack and went to the ER with chest pain, but they did not see any problem and sent me home.
I started loosing weight like crazy and went from 138 to 98 in 6 months. The doctor’s did not know what was wrong because all the tests came back normal! My cortisol levels were off the charts showing extreme pain but again from what!!!! A friend at that point told me of a Chiropractor that did natural treatment and I went to see her. She did help me to a point, but after 5 years of treatment and not getting well, we knew she could never help me get back to normal.
Last year I started loosing weight again out of the blue and she could not help me. She knew it was my kidney’s but did not know how to stop the problem. I contacted so many friends and doctors again looking for help. I found a friend that knew of an MD that was trained in all forms of medicine and I started seeing him in August 2013. I can not tell you how good it felt to have someone tell me: “Do you want to get well? Then, I can help you get well”. We can even get rid of the Lyme disease out of your bone marrow!”
So, if you ever see a small tick on you or near you run to your doctor and get on penicillin for 1 month. Write down the day you stop taking it and keep a close eye on how you feel. If you start having weird feelings of pain in your body and shaking in your muscles, you have Lyme disease.
Get back to your doctor and take more penicillin and doxycycline for another month or two. Find a Lyme literate doctor for treatment. Any other doctor can kill you if they do not treat it in the right order. It gets in your brain and bone marrow and is an auto-immune disease. Which, means it can kill you when you are trying to kill it off. It is no laughing matter. Take this seriously and be safe when you are near dirt, grass and woods.
My next post will be how Lyme can be transmitted to others. So, stay tuned!
LoveShineThriveLyme 