Just diagnosed with lyme! What happens next?

[Chakra]

I'm sooooo scared right now. I am blessed to have a really awesome doctor who is a MD/ND that diagnosed me per igenex blood test. I thought I was having symptoms of low thyroid and he said it was lyme. I thought he was a little crazy for thinking lyme since I live in AZ and didn't have the classic symptoms... He also believes I passed it to my 21 month old baby who was born with liver disease. I go on monday to go over my treatment plan. hE said it takes 6-12 months to cure. I'm very scared for my son who is not doing well.

What should I expect? My hvv6 test was very very elevated and that freaks me out too. Now I'm over here googling everything and I feel like I have a death sentence. It seems lyme can cause everything from cancer to MS...

Please tell me I'm freaking out...

[Harry's Mom]

Wow, how scary. My son (age 5) had lyme last summer so I started learning more about it then, and my dad's had it twice. It's different for every person depending on how long they've had it, but I think it's always treatable. This is one of those diseases where even if you don't like to take prescriptions, you need to follow the doctor's instructions and take the antibiotic and whatever else they recommend. I met one woman who's 12 yr old daughter had it for years and it was causing her to be bipolar and have significant incapacitating pain. She actually took a year of antibiotics, and it worked! You will be ok. Just take it one day at a time, take notes on everything the doctor says. The sooner treatment starts the better. If you've had it a while, it may take a while to see improvement but you will be ok. I don't know anything about it in infants, but there must be pediatricians out there who do. Hopefully others who've seen it in their kids will post. In the mean time, give yourself permission to relax and not stress about it every moment of the day. Take a warm bath, eat chocolate, whatever you can do to take care of yourself in other ways. My heart goes out to you!

B

[Chakra]

Thanks, B!

Funny...I did eat chocolate and I took a bath while my kids napped.

I feel like shi*, this really sucks. Lucky for me and my baby, our doctor is awesome and can treat it (he's a lyme expert too). I'm watching him cure people of cancer so I know we will be taken care of.

If anyone else reads please listen: I never had typical lyme symptoms. I felt like crap despite eating a very very healthy diet of organic chicken and fish, a lot of raw vegan foods, nuts and seeds, green smoothies, fresh juices etc. Despite all of this, my baby was born with a rare disease of his liver. I thought it was stress and lack of sleep and possible low thyroid that was causing me to feel this way. Turns out I have lyme disease! I watch people come into my doctors with chronic diseases praying he can help them. And he does...The crazy part is they almost all have lyme disease.

If you are sick or have any type of autoimmune/chronic illness please get tested for lyme! My doctor says that it is a epidemic worse than aids in Africa, and 3/4 of Americans are misdiagnosed and will never recover from their illness BECAUSE it was caused by lyme and thats what needs to be treated first.

[kjbrown92]

I was just diagnosed last week as well, and the doctor wants to test two of my kids for it as well (they both have food intolerances, and my first one was healthy, so he thinks I contracted it between pregnancy #1 and #2. They're getting tested next week. The doctor loaned me the documentary "Under Our Skin" - extremely depressing. But it does have those numbers about lyme disease vs. aids or West Nile virus (which they're making a huge deal about).

I was put on abx and Resveratrol and a pre/probiotic) for one month, and then the doctor is going to see what he wants to change. A lot of the abx that they use make you very photosensitive, and I live next to a lake during the summer, so he's basing some of what he does on that, and whether I'm getting better or worse. Sometimes you get worse before you get better.

I'm also in the hands of an "expert" which makes me feel better. There is a Lyme Mamas Thread that hasn't been active in a while, but it's got a lot of info. in it.

Good luck!!

[Koalamom]

I like the eat chocolate and take a bath idea. I have lyme as well as my baby but we went through some great herbal treatments and I feel much better. His liver has suffered too.

I am kind of glad to know I have lyme. I would really love to have more children, but I am determined to get rid of this before doing so so no more children have to go through this. Now that we have finished our treatments, I am rebuilding from what the lyme did to our bodies.

Just think that after getting rid of the lyme, allergies and health problems can and will go away. We are seeing it. We are here as a support if you need.