Is there any difference between menengitis caused by lyme and regular meningitis?
Is it possible to have lyme meningitis without a fever? (just feeling feverish, no actual fever)
How is it diagnosed? (please don't say MRI, my insurance is a pain to deal with when it comes to MRI's)
thanks!
Posted by duramater (Member # 6480) on :
Bacterially-based meningitis will causes a severe headache, usually some fever (low grade), stiff neck (up/down, not side-to-side), and other symptoms although those are the biggee. I cannot emphasize enough the severity of the headaches.
I had those symptoms, it was caused by Bb. The way to diagnose it is a spinal tap which will show things like elevated protein, elevated white cells, eleand in about 20% of patients, antibodies to Bb (which I had).
Posted by minimonkey (Member # 8693) on :
A good LLMD can also diagnose lyme meningitis on clinical presentation alone with pretty good accuracy. The headache is unbelievably bad, like worse than you can possibly imagine and then some (at least it was for me -- pretty sure I've had it 5 times now!) The stiff neck is excruciating, too. I've read that it is possible to have no fever at all, I had a very low grade one -- I certainly *felt* feverish, and also had uncontrollable vomiting, sweating, shaking, chills - - in short, horrible.
Posted by am36 (Member # 9409) on :
thanks for the replies
but it wouldn't spontaneously recover, right?
Posted by lymie tony z (Member # 5130) on :
Actually yes...at least it happens to me.
I get this neck stiffnes and headache with my monthly flare up...not all the time however,,,
It comes and goes....if however yours is staying then you'll need to chase it away with some abx.
zman
Posted by minimonkey (Member # 8693) on :
From what I've read, zman is right -- lyme meningitis can come and go rather without warning. That has also been my experience -- it lasts about 3 to 4 days (which are a living he**), and then subsides. This was true for me before I got diagnosed, too -- when I wasn't getting any treatment.
Posted by am36 (Member # 9409) on :
interesting. Not yet diagnosed. (stillweaning off steroids
A few months before my walking problems began (and a couple of months after they started evaluating me for lupus because I felt like a truck hit me), I had the most incredible headache that sent me to the hospital. Pain in the back of the head.
The ER was pointless. They gave me some painkillers which helped some,and toldme I should probably get an MRI done, but that should be done outpatient through my insurance plan. They let me go a few hours later.
I had ther pain on and off for a while. Finally did an MRI a couple of months later. Spinal tap was 8 months later way after I had stabilized. Socialized medicine.
Pain with stiffness in my neck seems to be coming back a bit now, but not yet to the same extent.
Until I get tested for lyme or spike a high fever, my gp will continue to tell me "probably stress"
Posted by minimonkey (Member # 8693) on :
Yeah, "probably stress" was my diagonosis for a long time too -- and then hypochondria, somatization of mental conflicts, fibromyalgia -- you name it, anything BUT lyme, and I am a total textbook case!
Posted by LYMESCIENCE (Member # 9259) on :
Yeah minimonkey, thats the f*#@ing truth. I don't buy anything the Ducks say about Lyme. Some try to say Lyme isn't also a diagnosis of exclusion, but I think thats pure quackery. Like you, I was also a textbook case, yet it still took 4 years to get diagnosed. I don't think the IDSA guildlines mean anything because even when you fit the guildlines, they still don't diagnose or treat.
I had the bullseye rash, positive elisa and confirmatory western blot, frank arthritis, and several DUCK confirmed physical abnormalities, but since I lived in North Carolina, all these physical abnormalities and my blood tests were just false postives on the blood tests, and some unknown condition for the other signs and symptoms.
I highly recommend not going to a DUCK for diagnosis. Trust me, even when you meet the so called guildlines, they still won't consider you to be a case of Lyme.
![[Frown]](frown.gif)