You may have been visiting your doctor for years complaining about a myriad of symptoms.  People may think that you are a hypochondriac.  Yet you knew something was wrong.  And one day finally you are told a diagnosis that you have a disease called Lyme disease.  How is it that the medical community was clueless?  After all this is the 21'st century with advanced medicine and all the tests in the world.  Why you wonder was your Lyme disease caught before.



               The answers are myriad.  First Lyme disease is frequently misdiagnosed.  Physicians overlook cases of Lyme disease simply because they do not know the complex nature of the origin and development of Lyme Disease.  Lyme Disease can cause over 100 different symptoms and the one commonly known symptom of Lyme Disease ? that is joint pain is only one of the many presentations of Lyme Disease.

                Secondly the tests for Lyme Disease are frequently useless and frequently misleading.  The bacteria which causes Lyme disease can only infrequently be grown in bacterial plates.  There is no one test to medical test diagnose Lyme Disease.  Hence your doctor has to be on the ball to catch your symptoms.  And even then he may not put together your odd symptoms as Lyme Disease if you unlucky enough to have Lyme Disease symptoms that ?are not in the book?.

                Not only is that Lyme Disease not caused by the one known bacteria. It is now estimated that 300 different strains of bacterial worldwide cause Lyme Disease.  Further it is not only the deer tick that spreads Lyme Disease.  Other ticks such as Lone Star Ticks, western black legged and wood ticks can spread Lyme Disease as well. And if that is not enough global warming is spreading the geographic range of some of these insects to previously unknown areas.

             You are not alone in being left out in the cold.  It turns out that Lyme Disease is much more common than previously estimated ? up to 10 to 15 times higher than the previous underrated estimates.  As you well have figures out by now doctors often miss most cases if Lyme Disease.  The reasons are not hard to figure out.  Further because of the apparent low rates of this disease it is not considered of any major public health concern so that there is no mandatory reporting procedure as one might find with venereal diseases.   You have been caught in a terrible vicious cycle.  Low diagnosis rates since doctors do not know what to look for and tests are not accurate in any manner.  Then because the true prevalence of the incidence of Lyme Disease is vastly underreported Lyme disease is seen as a minor disease that is well taken care of. Hence there is little need for education on how to catch the symptoms of Lyme Disease .The circle goes on and on.

            Amazingly even if you are one of the lucky few and have your Lyme Disease correctly diagnosed you may not be home free.  You may be under treated with antibiotic therapy.  The stated course of action is a 6 week schedule of antibiotic therapy.  Yet it often takes months, years and perhaps for ever of antibiotic therapy to manage this lingering disease with its hardy bacterial threat.

            It has been said that just because you are paranoid does not mean that people are not out to get you.  You were not imagining that your Lyme Disease took a very long time to diagnose.  And the reasons are real not imagined.