I was looking for a new general doctor and somehow previous medications came up. I mentioned I did a trial for lyme disease. She then told me that I couldn't have lyme disease because my joints weren't swollen.
This statement caught me by surprise because I knew this to be blatantly false. I wonder if she really doesn't know about both kinds of lyme disease or if she was lying to me to try to cover it up so we wouldn't have to talk about it. She said that some people go on IV for years so she does know something about it.
I told her that even the CDC will tell you that about both kinds of lyme disease and that they think it is a strain variation, if I remember what they told me correctly.
I would find it strange if she did try to lie to me thinking I wouldn't know the difference between lyme arthritis and neuralgic lyme with peripheral neuropathy, and meningitis like stiff neck. I also had what I thought was a lyme rash within a year before getting symptoms, but I was poorly informed at the time thinking it symptoms got bad I would get treated and cured and I didn't even know about neurologic lyme or chronic so I thought I was fine.
Posted by lpkayak (Member # 5230) on :
i have learned that many GPs are good ppl but ignorent of LD it is not taught correctly in med school and new info is not given to docs
it becomes very frustrating to us...who suffer...and we get mad. the doc should know, right???
but many really don't. same with our friends and relatives.
use her for your general care but make sure you have an llmd to follow the lyme
remember tests mean nothing unless you are dealing with an llmd who can understand even a neg
Posted by momlyme (Member # 27775) on :
Yeah, I had an ID duck tell me Lyme doesn't cause facial tics, tremors, involuntary jerks of movement, headaches, stomach aches and chest pains.
She wanted my son in the psych ward.
Leave these doctors offices and never go back.
Posted by METALLlC BLUE (Member # 6628) on :
She was ignorant of the disease and needs further information to become updated. So no, it's not uncommon to hear those statements and I don't think she's a liar.
Almost all forms of Lyme Disease exist along a spectrum, so there isn't merely two types. There are currently over 300 strains, and we know of 18 species which cause human infection. The vast majority are B. Burdorferi, but others are on the rise as we learn where these infections are most common and so forth. Additionally, these infection diseases are not limited to the Northeast of the United States. They are actually present and documented all along the temperate belt of the world, such as the north west, great lake belt, northeast, through the middle of Europe, including Italy, France, Germany, Poland, and into Russia, China and Japan. The infection also exists along the southern temperate belt.
Posted by METALLlC BLUE (Member # 6628) on :
Unless the physician is open to accepting new information (You can tell just by asking them if they know about XYZ, CDC, ILADS and the proponents of Chronic Infections and whether they'd be open to learning about their positions.
If not, leave immediately and find another physician using RateMD.com Choose the doctor with the highest number of reviews and the highest rating (5 stars is perfect, but anything above 4.5 is acceptable based on my experience, especially if they have 10 + reviewers)