hi all
about 3 days ago I saw a bite on my leg. It had a puncture middle and was raised sort of white/pink and had a small rash around it- not in a compete circle but long oval sides on both sides.
I had been walking a few days before in a probable tick area.
I do tick checks every single night and often a few times a day- in which I take all my clothes off and put them in the laundry and do a full check. I feel that it is unlikely that a tick, even as tiny as they are, could be on me for 24 hours without me seeing it.
So I went into a natropathic doctor and showed her the bite/rash that day. She is kind of young and inexperienced, by the way- pretty new to being a doctor.
I said- is this a tick bite? And she looked at it and said, yes- and the rash around it indicates that it is lyme.
And so she prescribed me doxyxyline, 400 mg's a day for 30 days, plus grapefruit seed extract and serapeptase.
I went back the next day to the same clinic to speak with their lyme specialist. By that time my bite had no rash at all, and was just a small pink bump. I started on the doxycycline and other things the first night after seeing the first doctor. She said it didn't look like lyme now, but that if the other doctor had said it was then it was and tat it is better to treat it now then to miss it, even as a precaution,.
I did a lot of reading up on it and understand that there are two school of thought. The mainstream doctors say- wait and see, 2 weeks of antibiotics.
And the other school of though- I think- is, it needs 4 weeks right at the start because of the life cycle. And the other herbs to penetrate the walls of it and to treat the cyst stage. Now I think the second school is more right- in that perhaps other people were not treating it as aggressively as they should.
I also read a lot about how good it is if you catch it in the first couple of weeks because you can knock it out of your system before it settles into the bloodstream etcetera.
Then today this morning I went to my regular MD doctor- who I like a lot. She is thoughtful and conscientious. I showed the bite to her this morning and it just looks like a small pink bump with a dark puncture spot in the middle.
She said she did not think it is lyme. She said based on that I do daily tick checks, it takes at least 24 hours with the tick on someone to inject lyme, and there is no way I would have missed it right on my lower leg in a 24 hour period when I do multi daily tick checks.
Also, she said the EM rash does not go away in one day. Tell me,is this true in your experience?
She said the dosage they prescribed me is dangerous and unnecessary, and that the recommended dosage for lyme is 200 mg doxycycline, not the 400 they prescribed.
She said she did not think it was lyme and she would not recommend I go on antibiotics.
I wish I had taken a photo when it was with the rash.
So now I don't know what to do. On the one hand, I know lyme is horrible- and that if I did have it, and I can catch this window to beat it out now before it would settle then I should do that.
On the other hand, does it sound like it would be a lyme tick bite to you all based on the things I have said?
Right now I have taken the dosages of doxycycline so far as I continue to figure out what I will do. After seeing the MD todayI took just the 100 mg
dose rather than the 200 mgs, but previously I did 3 doses of the 200 mgs.
I have a family member who had undetected lyme and had to do intravenous antibiotics an he is urging me to do the antibiotics as a precautionary. On the other hand, my doctor is telling me that to do a month of strong antibiotics when it doesn't seem (to her) that it is even lyme, is a bad choice. I am not sure what to do.