Chronic Lyme disease means that it's moved past it's initial phase and has infected more than one body part - it's disseminated throughout the body. According to the sources that I trust, this can happen in a matter of weeks to months in most cases - but since we can't measure your immune system here, we can't tell you for sure if your infection has moved past the initial stages or not, for sure, but it's likely considering how long you have been infected. Sorry.
Page 3 of Dr. Joseph Burrascano's "Managing Lyme Disease"
www.ilads.org/lyme/B_guidelines_12_17_08.pdf"A very important issue is the definition of “Chronic Lyme
Disease”. Based on my clinical data and the latest
published information, I offer the following definition. To be said to have chronic LB, these three criteria must be present:
1.Illness present for at least one year (this is approximately when immune breakdown attains clinically significant levels).
2.Have persistent major neurologic involvement (such as encephalitis/encephalopathy, meningitis, etc.) or active arthritic manifestations (active synovitis).
3.Still have active infection with B. burgdorferi (Bb), regardless of prior antibiotic therapy (if any).
You can see it laid out in a slightly different manner here, in Dr. Joseph Burrascano's power point presentation "Treating Chronic Lyme Disease"
www.lymepa.org/Burrascano_2004_0424_slides_handout.pdf Sorry those don't copy and paste well!
As far as what herbs to use to prevent Lyme, Buhner suggests Astragalus because it keeps the parts of the immune system that fight Lyme, higher than usual.
buhnerhealinglyme.com/herbs/using-astragalus/