I'm at my "get to know you" visit with my new PCP, hoping for an open mind on my journey to wellness.

I say "I just simply don't believe Lupus is the ONLY cause for these symptoms. I do not test DNA positive for Lupus, the only thing I have is an elevated ANA and that could be caused by many things".

Her response "The only other thing would be AIDS".

Withing 24 hours my HMO had me switched to a new PCP. They were appalled by the incident.

What are the odds of you being bitten by a tick that has Lyme.....

Duh I Dunno, I only spent every waking moment of my life MTN Biking, and Rock Climbing in the woods of Northeastern P.A. for the last 10 freakin years.

I should have said...

The odds of me catching LYME are better than the odds that you would be able to diagnose it if I did....

May The Force Be With You....

Obi Wan

"I've got your lab work back and everything is fine."

(I was 39 at the time.)
----------
Close runner up:

Me: This medication is making me gain weight.

MD: Medications don't cause weight gain. Eating too much causes weight gain.

Me: But I wasn't having any weight problems before I started taking the medication, and since I started taking it I've gained more than 30 lbs.

MD: If you weren't eating too much you wouldn't be gaining weight. After all, there weren't any fat Jews in Auschwitz.

P.S. I am Jewish.

When my Lyme tests came back positive (several tests from different labs), I told this doc about it. He replied, "We haven't seen a documented case of Lyme in Texas in many years".

When I told him that I had also tested positive for the co-infections babesia and ehrlichia, he made a complete about-face, stating, "Remember, M.S. is still in the differential".

Heaven help us!

Later, a wonderful Dr in New Jersey diagnosed Lyme affecting the central nervous system, causing the dementia.
When we got home, I told the local dr about the diagnosis. I wanted to sound knowledgeable, so I used the medical term Neuro-borreliosis. He looked surprised and asked "Where did he come in contact with barillium gas (sp?)"
Floored, I said, "No, tick bite...Lyme disease.."
He stammered, "OH, I knew that, I knew that."

I WISH I'd hit that doctor -- with a complaint to the state medical board.

Two days prior to the surgery I received a call from a doctor that I had seen to get a
'good physical' before having that surgery.

I was told that I had Lyme.

I cancelled my 2-day-away knee surgery.

Here's the good part...my husband happened to run into my Ortho Surgeon the next day at a local hospital...the surgeon inquired:

"So how did they diagnose that...on a CT?"

I have a two way tie:

#1: My children's EX-Pediatrician: "Most adults who think they have Lyme actually have something else." This was after he had grilled me about why I felt a need to have my daughter tested when she was exhibiting many symptoms of Lyme and my son and I were already being treated for late stage Lyme....I made the mistake of pointing out that not all Lyme patients present with swelling knees.

"you are hypochondriacal"

"you are a healthy young man with psoriasis...that all"

"you cant run a high fever from sinustis"

"small pox vaccines for your children isnt given any more
because the disease does not exist anymore"

"You can have antibiotics for your sinusits
because it is just a virus"...with no
cultures or evidence at all

After my son had monthly vomiting attacks
at age two for eight straight months..."
He gets alot of virus".....turned out to
be childhood migranes

"you don't have lyme - you just need to stay off the internet"
I responded with "how else can I learn - I don't happen to have a medical library in our home"
He says "Your not suppose to have a medical library - that is why you come to me. I AM THE DOCTOR with the education"

And the next time that he just happened to see us he took my husband aside and said:

"I believe that she believes that she is really sick, and I think that I could help her (wink, wink) I could prescribe just the thing to settle her down"

He dismissed all my symptoms that were coinciding with my EM rash as due to stress..but then he asked me what was something that I really wanted lately..something that would make me happy..

I thought for a minute...but was really put off by it..didn't know where he was going with it...and I said that I had been wanting to see Les Miserables in SFran..

well, he wrote a med script out to me and told me to give it to my husband...it said something like "take your wife to see Les Mis"...he said that that would make me feel better.

Duck #4
Me "everytime I go to my inlaws I have to sit away from them or across the room because I feel like I'm going to pass out everytime I am there"
Duck replied "In-lawidus"
I gotta admit it was funny but later figured out since the house is so small it had something to with the oxygen.

I had forgotten the prescription our doc gave my husband in the ER the night that I was there with my chin frozen to my chest!!

And they couldn't get an x-ray cause when they had me stand by the table and start to lay it down, I screamed with the pain.

The xray tech wrote "patient was very uncooperative"

I still have the prescription:

//Jane is to rest on the couch and be fed Bon-Bon on a silver platter by her lousy husband. Her husband is to wash the clothes and dishes, clean the home & take care of the kids.//

stay off the internet is always a good one.

Everyone has that buzzing noise in their head, you've only just become aware of it. Yeah, I believe that.

Doc: "There is no lyme in Chicago. But I know a doctor" (at - blank - Chicago hospital)"who treats lyme."

May The Force Be With You...

"After three weeks of 200mg/day Doxy, 99-44/100% of my patients get over Lyme for good."

This was from the guy who told me that his office has seen approx. one new case per Dr. per day (in the summer months) over the years.

1) Lyme only exists in Lyme, CT. and Babesia only exists on Long Island

2) You have 2 years to live because you have Chronic Mono

3) "you are crazy and depressed, you need a shrink, You dont have Lyme, your western Blot is negative"

4) "You could not have had 70 tick bites at once, thats imposssible!"

5) Oh, those are all neurological symptoms, you better take some Kava Kava.

6) You need steroids for the rest of your life

7) "You need to accept this illness as a part of your life"

8) "Nobody is longer than 10 days on IV for Lyme, everybody gets cured" HA!

9)"It cant be Lyme Disease AGAIN, you already had it." Your Brain MRI shows you have MS.

Me: So who do you go to?

ENT: Jordan is not sick, his mother just thinks he is.

PEDIATRICIAN: Make him go to school unless he is on his deathbed.

ID: If you have Lyme, you will test highly positive. Even if you have Lyme, it is only a nuisance not a serious illness. Two weeks of antibiotics will cure it.

ID: Doctors on the East Coast set up clinics just to treat Lyme and make money.

NEUROLOGIST: All kids have headaches and most of the time we don't know why. They usually are worse during the school year.

GI: Some kids have stomachaches and we don't know why.

PEDIATRICIAN: Could he be depressed? Go see a Psychologist.
PSYCHOLOGIST: Go see Pediatrician because not enough medical tests done.

ID: No reason to test for Bartonella and Babesia in Minnesota.

1. No I won't order a Lyme test, sooner or later the HMO is gonna "ding" me for ordering all these labs" Poor baby, his bonus check was at stake. I work at the hospital and see this boob on occasion. I walk with forearm crutches due to permanant nerve damage and have a PICC line in- " wow, you don't look to good, what's going on?" My answer " some idiot Dr refused to test me for Lyme and it turns out I have it and now I'm screwed for the rest of my life." No reply from the jerk.

I can NOT believe this!!!!!!!!! Especially about the boob doctor. Why are these doctors so dumb? What ever happened to the hippocratic oath they take? It makes me soooo mad all of these stories. Thank God for our LLMD!!!!!!! We would truly be lost without them if not 6 feet under. They are literally saving our very lives.

Liz

This actually happened to someone I used know. Sadly, the outcome was tragic.

Mom goes pumpkin picking with her kids. Daughter has Lyme and was in treatment for it. Sometime after returning home, daughter goes unconscious and into a coma. Daughter is rushed to the hospital where her LLMD practices (about 20 miles away). Enroute, she goes into complications so the ambulance turns around to taker her to the nearest hospital to be stablized because her life was at stake.

At the hospital she was taken to there is a self-proclaimed LLMD who believes that you are cured of Lyme after 28 days of antibiotics. Since the daughter had already been under treatment for Lyme for a longer period of time, the self-proclaimed LLMD poo-pooed the real LLMD's diagnosis and told the mom that her daughter really had a viral infection. Mom pleaded with the doctor, but was treated poorly. Doctor treats daughter with antivirals and daughter is still unconscious and in a coma. To placate mom, the self-proclaimed LLMD did try the daughter on IV antitbiotics and she showed some improvement but he didn't buy into it because "you're cured of Lyme after 28 days" and continued with the antiviral because he didn't believe she had Lyme. She was eventually transferred to the care of her real LLMD who proceeded with aggressive antibiotic therapy. She eventually regained consciousness (don't recall at which hospital that took place) only to be wheel-chair bound and no longer capable of coherent speech. Her mind still worked but she was no longer the same child. She was more like a child with cerebral palsy. The damage had been done.

The daughter passed away from complications several months later. Mom wanted an autopsy performed. I was told that the autopsy revealed that her little body had been infested with Lyme Disease.

So much for the "28 days and you're cured" theory.

..That last one was sad... guess it says a lot about docs these days doesnt it?
------------------
Lishka

[This message has been edited by Amareo (edited 14 July 2002).]

This was in the August 1993 issue - I called them "Infamous Quotations" -

(Ed. note: The following are doctor's comments as reported by the patients to whom they were made. The quoted physicians are all practicing in northeastern Ohio, many at most respected medical institutions. Some are neurologists, rheumatologists or infectious disease physicians; others are pediatricians and family practice doctors.)

"You can't have Lyme Disease in Ohio"

"There have never been any cases of Lyme disease reported in Ohio" (there had been about 400 at that time)

"You don't LOOK sick!"

"It's not Lyme disease, it's LIME disease!"

Doctor: "You don't have Lyme disease"
Patient: "How do you know?
Doctor: "I went to Harvard."

About a child: "She can't be too sick; she's smiling."

"I have no idea what you had, but whatever it was, you're over it now."

"There is no such thing as Lyme disease."

"A hundred years ago, she would have been termed a sickly child."

To a child: "I think you are depressed and need a psychiatrist who will put you on anti-depressants. And you're just going to have to learn to live with it."

"If she doesn't have arthritis, she doesn't have Lyme disease"

"You couldn't have Lyme disease. Lyme disease is susceptible to penicillin and you had 10 days of penicillin in 1988."

"Even if it is Lyme disease, it wouldn't make any difference because there is no treatment for Lyme disease."

[Ed. comment: Do we need any further demonstrations of the need for physician education about Lyme disease????] (end of article.)

How awful that for the most part, the picture has not changed in the past 9 years!!!