Chronic Lyme Disease

How do I know if I have chronic lyme disease? are certain symptoms indicative of chronic lyme?

I currently have numbness in the hands and feet, weakness and heaviness in legs and arms, and tremors--fingers shake when fingers are outstretched. These symptoms have been ongoing for four months. Weakness was the first symptom.

I'm wondering if 4 months is a quick catch and no other labs (like co-infection tests) need to be done?

Can I go to a regular infection specialist and be treated with antibiotics for a short period of time? (4 week?)

I should say that Lyme disease has not been confirmed. Recently, after many doctor visits and many tests, my "lyme antibody test" conducted by "BioReference" labs came out positive. There has been no Western Blot test done. Also: I havent been in the woods/woody area and I live in New York City so I'm not sure how I could have gotten lyme. Is it possible to get this condition without going in the woods?

I'm very sad, frustrated, in pain and would like for this to be over already!  

Thank you for any help you can provide.

 

My personal take on this is that it is worth it to take the antibiotics for 4 weeks. Is sounds to me like its very possible that you have either lyme or some infectious disease and it may respond to antibiotics. Antibiotics do have some side effects, but the benefit of potentially knocking out the disease (if it is in fact disease) far outweighs side effects of long term complications that will arise from walking around with this for years.

The reason I say this to you is for this reason..... Over the course of over 10+ years I watched myself get sicker develop more and more symptoms until I was practically disabled with neurological problems, musculoskeletal, autoimmune, psychiatric, and every other symptom in the book. I spent my entire 20's sick as a dog running from doc to doc with my life in a stand still. In no exaggeration, I probably went to over 80 doctors, spent thousands on tests and tried countless medications that I never needed and made me even sicker. I was given benzos, antidepressants, mood stablizers, sterioids, immune suppressants, DMARDS, off label antiphyschotics, etc. Not one of em worked or helped the slightest bit. And in fact, many of them practically killed me with very serious side effects. All the while I was getting sicker and sicker with increasing aches, pains, stiffness, muscle loss and deterioration, coordination problems, numbing in extremities, depersonalization, depression, shortness of breath, etc. You name it! I've developed every symptom in the book over the years.

In the end all I needed was an antibiotic. A simple antibiotic. Not one doctor that I went to over this time told me that I may have a chronic infection or this may be lyme. Not once did anyone consider this. And I've been to some of the supposed "top docs" in the world at NYU, Columbia, etc. All the major hospitals. BTW I also live in NYC. So you would think one of these geniuses would consider the possibility of chronic lyme or some infection but none of them did. It really blows my mind especially given the magnitude and scope of the symptoms I had. At the least you would think they would have recommended I try and antibiotic for a while to see if it helps. But seriously none of thought of this and in fact there were many times that I asked them what they thought about the possibility of trying an antibiotic for a while to see if it may help, and without fail, every single time the answer was... "no no no kid... that won't do anything for ya. If you had an infection we'd see it in the blood!" And.., "You've already been tested for lyme so this isn't lyme."

Well long story short, I am on 3 weeks of antibiotics and I'm feeling physically better than i have been in over a decade. I am starting to feel like an actual human being. I am getting my coordination back, breathing better, my muscles and strength are coming back, my brain fog and DP is lifting, aches and pains are getting better. I'm sure I got a long long long way to go still, but compared to being on my death bed 3 weeks ago I'm doing great.

So with that said,.... my opinion is go for it with the antibiotic and see if it helps. You could always stop if you don't see much progress. Hope this offered you at least one perspective. Best of luck to ya and hope your feeling better soon.

if you have had symptoms 4 months..I would start with LLMD b/c it could have been dormant prior to that or symptoms were there and u dismissed ie headaches etc...IMHO