I just emailed her and she said the condition is called ITP and the red dots are burst capillaries caused by low platelet count. I went to a website about ITP, and a few people on their message board remember being bitten by a tick prior to the ITP.

Anybody know of ITP?

low platelet count:
An abnormally low platelet count. Normal platelet counts are 150,000-400,000 per cubic millimetre.

Those with low platelet counts may exhibit haematuria, haematemesis, easy bruising, bleeding gums, melena (blood in stools), prolonged menses or nosebleeds. Spontaneous intracranial haemorrhage can occur with platelet counts of 10-15,000 (or less).

Heres something else. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000535.htm
http://www.itppeople.com/aboutitp.htm
http://www.gamunex.com/web_docs/theitpfactsheet%2Epdf

Drug-induced thrombocytopenia

James N G******, MD

UpToDate performs a continuous review of over 330 journals and other resources. Updates are added as important new information is published. The literature review for version 12.3 is current through August 2004; this topic was last changed on February 10, 2003. The next version of UpToDate (13.1) will be released in February 2005.

The clinician is frequently faced with the problem of a patient presenting with a low platelet count. One important and reversible cause is drug toxicity. The pathogenesis and clinical management of patients with suspected drug-induced thrombocytopenia will be reviewed here with the exception of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, a disorder that is associated with a hypercoagulable state rather than bleeding. (See "Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia"). Also discussed elsewhere are related issues such as drug-induced syndromes which produce thrombocytopenia along with other cytopenias or organ involvement (eg, chemotherapy, aplastic anemia, and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura-hemolytic uremic syndrome) [1,2] and an overall approach to the patient with thrombocytopenia. (See "Approach to the patient with thrombocytopenia").

Theres more to artical here. http://patients.uptodate.com/topic.asp?file=platelet/4585

There is a sister disease called TTP - Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. This is even more dangerous, here the platelets drop and the red blood cells fragment causing strokes and seizures. This was the first major diagnosed disease I had.

I was in the hospital for 4 months receiving 30 pints of plasma for 10 hours a day every day, not a fun disease. My current doctors all believe now that my TTP was caused by the Lyme or co-infections.

Most of the people with eitherof these diseases suffer the same set of symptoms that we do. THe problem is that predisone is really the first line of defense for both disorders, which for a Lyme patient is very serious.

I have met 2 TTP and 8 ITP patients who later went on to test positive for Lyme. In my case my body was producing anti-bodies to platelets, just like it is now producing anti-bodies for several of my hormones.

I have these too, the small ones, the "mole" like ones and small bruising. I'm getting rid of a bad systemic yeast and mold infection right now and I'm hoping that's it and not bart or babs...

My LLMD told me that babesia lives in red blood cells. I can't help but think that would have something to do with this.