As the others have said, your test is positive. Treat the illness before you lose ground.

And just think when you take that pill, there are people in this world who would literally give one of their kidney's just to have medication.

There are bands that are sensative to other spirochetes (lyme and syphilis) and then there are bands that are specific just to Bb.

If you are positive on Bb specific bands..you have Lyme. You dont make antibodies to Lyme, if you havent been exposed to Lyme.

You are not alone in your thinking. I have second-guessed this all along, but as the others have suggested, am going through the ABX treatment with an LLMD. The risks of not doing it are greater than potential upset of your digestive system...WHICH btw, you can mitigate with Probiotics, and eating right. I am starting my second month of abx, and have very little digestive issues...no yeast, etc. You can manage this...have faith in yourself! Our bodies are tough...and will recover...especially if you caught this quick, which I think you have.

Part of it, I think, is THIS: We grow up, if we're normally healthy non-doctor oriented people, thinking that if there's nothing on us hanging out bleeding or sticking out at a wrong angle (like a compound broken bone or something), then WE MUST BE JUST FINE. It's very hard to accept that a foreign organism you can't see has invaded your body and your body hasn't been able to HUNT IT DOWN AND KILL IT!

However, at some point, especially with positive tests in hand, you have to let go and trust your LLMD, and "take your medicine." Even though you can't see it, and it's not bleeding, broken, or sticking out, you really do have Lyme disease. :-)

Now, take that pill. I just did. :-)

If it were me, and given the Sympts. and signs, plus Igenex report, I'd assume that I do have it, and go from there. Waste absolutely no time getting antibiotic into your system.

Bb is stealthy; there are sublte, and extremely subtle manifestations that occur, and which, are indicative of a well established infection. Signs and symps. easily written-off as something else.

There are subtle mental(cognitive), emotional, and physical manifestations, that vary in intensity, degree, extent...blah blah blah.

For theses See Robert Bransfield,MD head 'expander/shrinker' for subtle manifestations at http://www.mentalhealthand illness.com Exceptional phenomenological and objective descrptions of lyme.

See studies, and descriptions by Brian Fallon,MD, at Columbia U.

Get hold of as many check-off lists as possible, and complete them.

For links for newcomers, find TreePatrol's links and Tincups links for excellent start.

Syphilus-early lesion may be missed in women because it's inside, however, in men there is a lesion on the penis so it would be difficult to not notice.

I know how you feel..I too was amazed that my Igenex test came up positive after 9 years of illness. I am still unsure to tell you the truth, but I have started low dose abx. I can't tolerate the high doses because of diarrhea, except doxy and it didn't herx me or help me so I moved on to the next one.

You are correct about the signs of syphilis. However, it is also true that usually if a person has an STD they have more than one--so the person would know if they were 'at risk'.

Take for instance, most people who are infected with HIV sexually also have herpes, clamydia, syphilis, genital warts and various other things.

The standard ELISA cannot tell the differance.