Hi Anxious girl!
Welcome to our little community!!! I'm so sorry that you have a reason to be here, but I'm sure glad you found us!
Unfortunately, yes, you most likely have Lyme disease. The bulls eye rash is the skin form of this disease.
No, it doesn't mean that you were bit by a tick, it could have come from a spider or any other bug that bites and draws blood, including mosquitoes, deer flies, fleas and even bed bugs.
Although you are more than welcome to try, going back to your regular doctor usually won't get you the treatment you need to get rid of this infection. It's a very complicated infection that needs high doses of abx, and clarithromycin isn't really the right abx. You will need 400 - 600 mgs of Doxycycline a day (usually 200 mgs three or four times a day) for 8 weeks to get rid of this infection. Please be sure that you get this abx and take this dosage, so that you don't end up with Chronic Lyme disease, a very debilitating disease. Any less and all that is done is to keep the bacteria from replicating, not killing it off.
You will likely need to see a LLMD - Lyme Literate Medical Doctor near you in order to get the proper treatment.
For information on finding a Lyme Literate Medical Doctor(LLMD) in your area, you can start a new thread titled something like:"Looking for LLMD in the _______ area." Although you will need to enable your email option in your profile in order to receive any recommendations, as we don't allow doctor's names and contact info to be posted on the forum for several reasons. You can enable your email option in your profile, under 'edit profile'. Be sure to click the submit button to actually save your preference.
You can also email our long time member, Dan's Mother at:
[email protected] You can also email Stephanie at:
[email protected] You can also go to:
www.turnthecorner.org/ if you want to learn a little bit more about
Lyme Disease.
You can also go to The Lyme Disease Association and search for LLMD's 3 times in a month. You have to register first. Here is the link:
www.lymediseaseassociation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=277&Itemid=74 You will want to find an ILADS (International Lyme And Associated Diseases Society) trained doctor, as ID Docs (Infectious Disease Doctors) believe Lyme is hard to catch and easy to treat, and don't believe in the reality of chronic Lyme. The ILADS site is another great place to read to get you started on your Lyme journey.
www.ilads.org/lyme_disease/treatment_guidelines_clearing_ilads.html If you haven't already, it would be helpful for you to start with reading through the thread at the top of the forum titled,
"New to Lyme?...Start here!!", as it is packed full of important information, symptom lists (as Lyme rarely occurs by itself), helpful links and pdf's, how to detox when one has these infections, and a list of questions that you can ask any doctor that you are seeking treatment from!
We also have a pretty good search function on this forum to help you narrow down your search for information from past posts. We must be our own health advocates now and the best thing to arm yourself with is knowledge about
our infections and the different ways to treat them!