When should I be worried?

Hello everyone,

I started feeling sick about two weeks ago, took a bunch of days off work. My neck and back were aching, i felt fatigued, and had shortness of breath. My head was pounding and I thought it was the flu. After being sick for about a week, I noticed I had these red circle rashes on my arms, my legs, and my back. I work in a chemical plant, so I assumed it was just an allergic reaction to something. After a week of not getting any better my employer sent me to the doctor to get it checked out. I figured maybe its ringworm or something. The Doc asked me if I had been in the woods lately, and I said yes about a month ago. I said I remembered pulling a few ticks off of me, but thought nothing of it. She said she is extremely certain that I have Lyme Disease. It kind of hit me by surprise, being young and thinking I'm invincible, I didn't think it was possible. She gave me a 21 day supply of doxycycline, 1 x 100mg tablet twice a day. I've started feeling worse recently been feeling very sore, sick, my joints hurt badly too. I only started taking he medicine yesterday. When should I be worried and think about maybe going to the hospital?

Hi Stazzi,

Welcome to the forum!

That's great that your doctor picked up on the Lyme. You will feel worse before you feel better. And as bad as you feel, a hospital is not going to make you feel any better, unfortunately.

As WWJD suggested, the best thing to do is to familiarize yourself with the disease and the healing crisis or Herxheimer reaction.

One of the first things you will want to look into is the dosage of doxy you are taking. It is about half of what is needed to kill off the Lyme bacteria. Perhaps your doc is starting you off slowly, which would be fine.

It is very important that you get treatment beyond the cessation of symptoms. This is to make sure you don't relapse later.

You've found a great group of people, here, who are more than happy to offer support and share what they have learned.