Please help! Lymes or MS?

In May 2017 I started feeling pins and needles in arms and legs never at the same time and would switch sides and come and go. It started really freaking me out. Three times in May I woke up and my left hand wouldn't move at first. I have bad GAD and health anxiety so I tried to believe that was the cause. But I started panicking I have MS.

Those symptoms stopped and in June I noticed I had what looked like three little itchy bug bits in a row coming off of my underwear line. This moved a little and ended up large and itchy on my thigh. I went to my doctor and she gave me a steroid lotion. In July I started getting hives for the first time. Some got really big and a couple almost looked like slight bruising after. Went to dermatologist and she had me get off Effexor thinking an allergy. I got off Effexor and would still get hives here and there. Now this month I broke out in hives worse than ever. Head to toe. The hives on my inner thighs got really big and I went to an allergist he was not sure what the cause but thought maybe ibuprofen. After one day the 3 hives on my inner thighs turned into distinct bullseyes. Went in to doctor and tested negative for lymes.

I hike in the woods every week but have never found a tick.

I also see floaters and have for 5 years but they have gotten worse over the last 6 months or so. I am worried and don't know what to do.

Doctor says if the bullseye mark appears again get a biopsy?

Please help.

Thank you

I want to post a photo but can't figure out how

Welcome, GLM


A bullseye is diagnostic of Lyme Disease.

You don't need any testing to prove you have it.

I wouldn't bother with a biopsy of it...not necessary...and I don't think it will prove anything?
Maybe others' will comment further on this.

To post a photo, you need to register with another site like TinyPic.com or Photobucket.com.
You load the photo there and then post a link to it here.

If I were you, I'd find a LLMD and schedule an appointment to start treatment. We can help you find one. Just start a new thread: "Looking for LLMD in/near______" and fill in the blank with your location.

In addition, you can email me and tell me your location and I will check my list and send you LLMD's for your area (if I have some)

You should enable your email option (through "My Profile") - so members can send you names privately. We don't post the LLMD names on here for their protection. They can be investigated for treating Lyme disease patients for extended periods.

I thought I had MS for a while but an MRI ruled that out and moved me along towards finding my lyme diagnosis

Bullseye is basically your confirmation imo, especially coupled with the fact that you hike every week in wooded areas. Deduction based on these facts coupled with symptoms I'd be very surprised if you weren't dealing with a tick-borne infection. Most patients don't remember a tick bite or attachment. Lyme and coinfections can also manifest in a variety of dermatological symptoms and are often multi-systemic in nature. Anytime you have symptoms across multiple body systems it is very important to look closely at the chronic infection angle. If you can you should try and see a lyme literate doctor.

The key is doing some research, figuring out your options. Like I said, first best option imo is if you can connect with an llmd. If this is not possible I would research a bit, ask around (like you are doing), and look into herbals if you are interested in that angle. And if you start that stuff do start slowly, you can get a flare in symptoms/herxheimer response with effective antimicrobials. That can also serve as further confirmation of underlying infection, it is like a challenge test you could say.

Also there is a New To Lyme section up top which I do recommend reading as that could have some helpful information for you.

If herbal therapies make sense to you I would just research a bit and ask other patients. I think of them as a lower risk higher reward kind of option. There are lots of various protocols, Buhner wrote a book called Healing Lyme which is very informative and excellent. There are things like the Core Lyme Protocol from Green Dragon Botanicals, combines multiple herbs into one capsule. Makes it pretty easy. There are many others of course too. But the herbals could at minimum serve as a stopgap measure until you see an llmd, or they could be a longer term strategy for self-treatment. Depends on what you are comfortable with and what makes sense to you!

Good luck, please feel free to shoot away with any questions!

I don't know much about your symptoms, just wanted to give my two cents on the question in the title. Autoimmune diseases are bs diagnoses. They are essentially just infectious diseases for which a pathogen has yet to be found. And it is not always likely that there is a single pathogen in the first place making a symptom based diagnosis especially pointless. For example GBS is linked to many pathogens. Once you get past the point of dealing with symptomatic complications a diagnosis of GBS is worthless because it doesn't tell you whether you should be treating a viral or bacterial infection or whatever. Same probably applies to MS. No two people have the same ecology, therefor no two people have the same disease. Nor is there anything about the nature of MS that demands a singular cause. MS essentially isn't even a real disease. It's a symptomatic description which may or may not be useful depending how many microorganisms can lead to the same symptom. So approaching it as you would Lyme is very helpful. As i'm sure you see here most people are treating holistically. Considering coinfections, diet, herbal practices, stress, environmental health etc. Because even if we know we have Lyme there is no possible way we can know every infection or causal factor playing into it. So we address the big picture and let the body work its magic when it can. You can play around with some herbal antibiotics or antivirals and see what happens.

Just wanted to add (incase you need anymore proof of tick born disease) that those hives all over & then especially on inner thighs are one of those weird symptoms I've been experiencing on & off for years pre-diagnosis. I also thought it was an allergic reaction to various things , but it's just Lyme ( or some kind of confection).

Thank you everyone! I really appreciate it. I feel like I am in the dark about what is happening with my body and it is a scary feeling

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I hope this works. Here is a photo of what one of munch legs looked like

On "MS"- "They then give these symptoms a name and market it as a disease in itself. Because a person treating a symptom for 40 years is much more money that can be made than a person treating a root cause for 1,2,3 years and "curing" themselves of it."

I had no idea untill recently the MS Dx is along the same lines as a Fibro Dx- its just been acepted no much longer that many assumed its a real defined disease. i think you have to have spinal cord or brain leasons to have the MS lable applied. It appears that most (not all) people with that Dx accept it as such and stop looking for answeres / cause. That is the "mindset" I seem to read off them get when I ask questions.

Unfortunantly, people who dont do their own homework with cronic illness are the first to be overcome by it.