Lyme Handbook

 Excerpted from  The Times Herald ( Posted: 04/10/2011 ) 

Much of the time the tick-borne disease is present, the familiar bull’s eye rash is not part of the equation of symptoms that can mimic a host of other diseases, including multiple sclerosis and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Children are often misdiagnosed as having ADD or ADHD, Wagner said.

“What that meant for Dawn is that her symptoms went unrecognized as possibly being related to Lyme disease or other tick-born infections.

“When it goes misdiagnosed for years it becomes a much more serious illness, impacting the immune system and virtually every system in the body, as was the case with Dawn,” she said.

“The problem is that the science behind the research has not caught up with mainstream medicine, and now there are really two different schools of thought on Lyme disease.”

The old-school view is that it is a relatively benign disease and relatively easy to cure, noted Wagner, who will be speaking at the fundraiser.

“That’s the interpretation that insurance companies have put all of their weight behind because it involves a very short course of antibiotic treatment, which they perceive will save them money.”

More recent developments, which have emerged in the last decade, have fueled the Lyme debate and an understanding that Lyme can be a chronic, exceedingly complex illness that not only involves Lyme, but many other infections from ticks.

~ by Rob on April 10, 2011.

Posted in Lyme
Tags: ADD, ADHD, Lyme, Lyme Disease, Pennslvania, ticks