mammabear
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Me, my sister, and my 15 month old son have all been recently diagnosed with Lyme Disease. About a year ago, my sister began the start of a very trying time in her life. She was going through a divorce, starting a new relationship that involved some initial turmoil, and caring for her dying grandmother all within a few months. As you can imagine, all of this brought along an incredible amount of stress...stress that must have severly impaired her immune system. During this time, she began to have issues with bladder control but none of us thought much of it. Next, she started to lose a lot of weight, but we figured it was due to all of the emotional stress she was enduring. However, when she started losing all sensation in her feet and found she couldn't even walk or drive a car and she ended up in the emergency room because she felt like she was going to die, we began to realize that there was something serious going on with her health. She went to see a neurologist who did an MRI of her brain and found MS like lesions. This doctor did two blood tests and a spinal tap for Lyme disease and found no evidence of Lyme. I don't know what lab these results were sent to, but I know it was not IGENX, inc. My sister was just beginning to wrap her brain around the fact that she was faced with a future of MS and was considering beginning steroid therapy for the MS(which would have made her much worse-you do not want to take steroids if you have Lyme)when, perhaps by divine intervention, I overheard a woman at my job talking about her Lyme disease treatments. I stopped and asked her "you have Lyme?" "My sister was just diagnosed with MS, but I wonder if she could have Lyme." This woman gave me the name of the doctor who diagnosed her (a local LLMD in our area). My sister made an appointment, the LLMD tested her for Lyme through IGENX and her test results were clearly positive for Lyme disease. Today my sister is on her third month of antibiotic treatment and is already seeing improvement. After my sister received her Lyme diagnosis, and I started researching and learning more about Lyme, I began to realize that I may have been exposed to Lyme myself. Four or five years prior, I had noticed a bulls' eye rash on my leg (but I thought it was a bad reaction to a mosquito bite because I had not seen a tick). I also remember having a summer time flu around this same time. I went through the list of Lyme symptoms and realized I had many of them although my symptoms are so mild I would never have considered going to a doctor for any of them. I made an appointment with this same LLMD and told her my story. She felt that I should be tested. My test results were positive according to IGENx on the IgM, but not the IgG. I also tested positive for co-infections with Babesia and Ehrlichia. I am currently finishing my first month of antibiotic treatment. So far, I don't notice too much of a difference. Maybe it's too soon to know. The most heartbreaking of all, is that I have a 15 month old son and I became concerned that I had passed the infection to him eiher when I was pregnant with him or during breastfeeding. Last week, I had him tested and his results were positive for Lyme (IgG, but not IgM). I am waiting on results of his co-infections test. It breaks my heart to no end to know that I infected my perfect, beautiful baby boy with this awful disease and I fear for his future and his health. He is not showing any Lyme symptoms that I can tell. He is healthy and happy. He will be beginning amoxicillin to treat the Lyme next week. |
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