What are the Signs and Symptoms of Lyme Disease?

Lyme Disease causes numerous symptoms, but none of them are unique to lyme disease, which makes diagnosing Lyme disease on the basis of presenting symptoms extremely difficult.
Further, it has also been identified, that each of the 4 Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria groups can and do generate different symptoms of Lyme disease to each other, making it damn near impossible to identify Lyme disease purely on the basis of presenting symptoms alone.

There are, however, 3 common symptom stages in the progress of Lyme disease in humans, and each stage of Lyme disease comes with its own kind of general symptoms:

Stage 1 Symptoms of Lyme Disease:

Within 2-3 weeks of the Lyme infection:
High temperature, fatigue, headaches, muscle pains, joint pains (not arthritis) and enlarged lymph glands, typically shows.

Lyme disease infection - the red bulls-eye

A red bulls-eye looking infection often shows within one month of being bitten by an infected tick, normally at the same spot where the tick bit you. You can see this bulls-eye characteristic in the following picture. Matter of fact, this characteristic is the only symptom totally unique to Lyme disease infection in humans, that when you get it, your doctor can diagnose the condition on that symptom alone. Alas though, not everyone who becomes infected with Lyme disease gets this unique symptom, only about 60 to 80% of Lyme infected persons in North America do so.

Stage 2 Symtpoms of Lyme Disease:

After a number of weeks, or even months, the common Lyme disease symptoms can include:
Inflammation of the heart, chronic inflammation of the tissues surrounding the brain or spinal cord, inflammation of a nerve often with pain and occasionally loss of function (eg Bell’s palsy) and inflammation of the outer surface of the eye. Pain in joints and pain in muscles are often prominent.

Stage 3 Symptoms of Lyme Disease:

The symptoms that can occur months / years after contracting Lyme disease:

Lyme disease arthritis - Lyme arthritis

In the USA and Canada the main Lyme disease symptom is significant arthritis of the large joints, especially the knees.

Acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans

In Europe, the main symptom to appear at this stage is acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans, which is a skin condition generally affecting the hands and feet. The skin being chronically inflamed, which leads the skin to become extremely thin, dry and fragile, with areas of hardening and thickening.

 These stages of Lyme disease symptoms are vital to diagnosing and treating Lyme disease.

If you try and treat Lyme disease without knowing what symptom stage the Lyme disease is in, there is a good chance you will treat the lyme disease with the wrong treatment.

Much of this information on Lyme disease came from http://medent.usyd.edu.au/fact/lyme%20disease.htm - a rather dry piece of academic work, but full of information.

Stage 1 and Stage 2 Lyme Disease Treatment with Antibiotics 

The antibiotic treatment for early Lyme disease typically results in full recovery. A two week treatment with oral doxycycline or amoxycillin during Stage I and a third generation cephalosporin for Stage II are the popular treatments.

Chronic lyme disease treatment with Antibiotics

 Treatment for stage 3 Lyme disease is not as worthwhile with the chronic infection remaining resilent to treatment, and some of those who do seem to benefit may experience bouts of relapse. A third generation cephalosporin over 3 weeks is considered worthwhile.

However,with stage 3 Lyme disease symptoms, treatment with appropriate antibiotics may continue for up to two month.  Generally, once the arthritis symptoms are gone, the treatment is deemed successful.  Some people will not get over their arthritis, even with the two months antibiotic treatment.

Most cases of Lyme arthritis, by the way, are non-destructive, so people with Lyme arthritis  have complete recovery.

Prevent Chronic Lyme arthritis and other such lyme related conditions

It is important to realise that early antibiotic treatment in stage 1 may prevent the chronic conditions of eg Lyme arthritis from taking hold.  Even if you have a mild case and you and your doctor don’t feel antibiotics are needed then, you need to realize that the infection continues in your body and does continue to do damage, hence early antibiotic treatment is considered best, even in mild cases of the disease.

Why is antibiotic treatment used for Lyme infections?

Well, in this photo below, you can see just one of those  little critters

and in this photo below, you can see a large number of them,

and those critters are bacteria.

Appropriate antibiotics will trigger the body to make antibodies to attack that specific bacteria, vis-a-vis Lyme disease.

You must always complete the course of antibiotics that you are prescribed for your Lyme disease, as if you do stop the antibiotics prematurely, the  body may not yet have wiped out the bacteria completely, and any bacteria remaining may still be able to breed up.  If they do that, the antibiotics you previously used may not work the second time round, as the bacteria adapts to the antibodies that were attacking it, but failed to kill the infection completely.  This is called antibiotic resistence, and you may inadvertantly breed up a strain of Lyme disease that is hard to kill off – all because you couldn’t be bothered taking the full course of the antibiotic to start with, because you started to feel well.

Photos of the Lyme disease bacteria courtesy of  www.cdc.com , and the antibiotic info largely from http://medent.usyd.edu.au/fact/lyme%20disease.htm

Well, I think I’m doing much better lately. I don’t suddenly lose words like I was doing. Do you know how annoying it is to suddenly forget the word for fridge in the middle of a conversation when you’re trying to sound intelligent?

“I’m just going to run and stick my lunch in…uh…that white box thing that keeps food cold and I’ll be right back to help you set up, ok?”

“You know, I think I’ve got it covered. Are you sure you can handle working today? Maybe you need to go home and rest.”

“No, no, I’m fine. Just forgot the word for fridge for a second there.”

I still tire out really easily, but something reconnected in my brain and on top of losing words less often, I am no longer taking an hour to compose a single paragraph. Yahoo!

I’ve been thinking, though. If I knew I’d get Lyme disease, would I have avoided gardening and hiking and feeding feral cats? I don’t think so. I still do some of those things, although I am a little weird about it.

“Here, kitty, kitty. I’ll just stand three feet away so I don’t startle him, wait til his head is in the bowl and stretch over with the treatment tube… Ah, ha! You’re good for another month, buddy.”

It isn’t cheap treating every stray I still haven’t managed to trap and place in a new home, but it is worth avoiding having them drag ticks near the house.

And gardening – well, I like to do that when temps are well below freezing and hide indoors when it is nice. I’m certainly not doing much, either. Walking across the yard wears me out. Digging and transplanting -forget it.

Hiking is still really important to me, too, but I haven’t gotten the nerve or the stamina to venture back out there.

So, what about you? Would you have still done things that could result in a tick bite? Are you still doing that kind of stuff? I really want to know.

I was talking to someone yesterday who got Lyme disease 5 years ago. She says she was full of energy and never sick in 70 years. Then, she became a Lyme victim and got arthritis and a list of other ailments one after the other. She says she’s had many relapses over the past few years.

A woman standing nearby said she must have meant to say Lyme survivor. She responded immediately that she definitely meant victim because she hasn’t overcome the Lyme disease – it still is bothering her.

I don’t like the thought of being a victim, though. Maybe Lyme fighter?

I’m personally doing pretty well this week, although I still have no stamina to speak of!

Science Daily reports that a study by Columbia University Medical Center shows that using IV antibiotics helped chronic Lyme disease patients with cognitive impairment improve. Unfortunately, ending the antibiotics ended the improvement, but it is progress. The most important thing to me is that a major university with a very good reputation is studying Lyme disease and thinks that chronic Lyme disease exists.

I can’t believe I am back to all of the constant joint pain. I’m not taking any pain medications that cause water retention and I’m all puffy handed again, too. Other symptoms, such as dizziness, nausea and whatnot are back, too. The worst part is that I’m still on antibiotics. What a mess!

No matter what the CDC says, Lyme disease doesn’t always just up and vanish after a 30 day dose of antibiotics and I am living (although slightly whiney!) proof.

By the way, I was talking to someone today who was in pain from Lyme disease for quite some time and could barely function. He thinks that Lyme disease may actually leave behind a condition like fibromylagia. His doctor treated the symptoms he had like they were being caused by fibromylagia and gave him a medication for nerve pain and I must say, he looks like he feels 99% better than the last time I saw him. It was really interesting hearing him talk about this right after I read the news article on chronic Lyme disease not existing. Perhaps calling it post Lyme disease syndrome is the correct thing to do.

There is an uproar in the Lyme disease patient community over a new report by a group of scientists and doctors that says chronic Lyme disease does not exist:

A prestigious group of physicians and scientists says there is no evidence that chronic Lyme disease exists, and that patients may be doing themselves more harm than good by undergoing prolonged antibiotic therapy.

They prefer to call the problems of people with long term symptoms post Lyme disease syndrome and compare it to fibromylagia. Frankly, I don’t care what they call it. I want them to come up with a way to fix it!