I need help! Lyme Disease

I found an engorged deer tick on my thigh on June 23 of this year. I started feeling the classic symptoms of lyme shortly afterwards... fatigue,fever,headache, changes in sleep pattern, anxiety and an overall crappy feeling. I went to the dr. a month later and he prescribed doxy 200mg 2x a day. he also ordered a elisa, igm igg? I took the antibiotics but not as prescribed because I felt worse ( I know, stupid). I took them for a week here, then a few days and did not take the full course. I got the test done on July 29 and it came back negative. it has been about three and a half months and now I feel worse. I have brain fog, its hard for me to write this post. headaches most of the time on and off, bad joint pain in my knees, elbows, shoulders. the joint pain is interrmintent and shows up in random joints. I believe that the test is wrong as I learned from this site that the test is inaccurate. I also believe that I didn't take enough doxy to put my lyme into remission (undertreated). I live in Ct. I don't know where to go from here. I was thinking of going to the dr and taking a full three weeks of doxy, and then seeing how I felt. I failed to mention to the dr that I Took a low dose of doxy in the army in Afghanistan for months at a time to prevent malaria. Would this cause problems if I took Doxy for lyme? Are there any lyme literate drs in my area? Most drs don't have a clue about this disease. Any suggestions on what I should do? I am lost and very depressed.

I am in Seymour. 15 min from New Haven. The army told me I am allergic to PCN. I have amoxicillin but I am hesitant to take it. There is a walk in clinic in Southbury that I can go to. Are my chances of it going into remission high since I am catching it at 3 to 4 months?

Oh okay maybe you can do a scatch test for penicillin or did you have that ? I am not in your state but in a neighboring state where there is at least 1 if you cannot find one. It is about an hour from you.

I'm really sorry Barngurl, but no doctor's names or contact info can be shared on this forum for a couple of reasons.

My apologies to Twarner as well.

The most important one (in my eyes) is because in some cases, these doc's are putting it all on the line so that they can treat us. We don't want to give anyone any leads as to who to go after. This is an open forum and anyone with a computer can read these posts.

The other is because Admin has asked that no doctor's names be mentioned - that way no one can mistakenly think that a recommendation came from this site.

We ask that members make their email available to other members in order to share that kind of information. You can do this by going to your profile, select 'edit profile', and in that section you can select to "show my email". Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the 'submit' button to save your preferences.

Thank you for your understanding.

Hi Twarner,

Welcome to the forum! Have you checked out the "New to Lyme" thread? Lots of information on lyme there including how to get in to see an ILADS physician that is capable of treating lyme/physician referrals.

It sounds like on the doxy you could have either been having a reaction OR a herx reaction which is very common. Some use antibiotics to treat lyme, others use alternative methods. There are a lot of different treatments out there for lyme.

I had the brain fog, neuro issues etc. It all went away after a brief herxing period on antibiotics. This is a really wonderful site for information. The search box on top is great. If you type in lyme brainfog for example, all the pasts posts come up.

~beth

Hey t, mine went into remission but I relapsed not too long after that. It may give you some time to get a long term plan. Happy to hear youve got some medication.