Lyme- I found it fairly early- Am I doing everything I should?

Hello everyone,
How grateful to find this forum. I live in TX and there isn't as much information here as on the East Coast. I just traveled to Massachusetts, where I must have picked up at least one tick. I returned home exactly 5 weeks ago. I noticed an extremely large bruise on my leg, but I am busy and thought I just knocked it and kept going. When we returned home, I was exhausted and I thought I was just coming home from a stressful trip. But as the days and weeks went by, I would have off and on bad evenings of exhaustion and flu like aches all over. Not to mention strange new symptoms of panic and a sort of buzzing all over. I started to fear Lyme Disease because our host had battled with lyme for over 15 years and he had mentioned it on our trip. One day when I was getting out of the shower, drying myself with a towel, I flicked what looked like a tick into the sink. I now can say that I believe it was a black legged deer tick. So I started searching my body and found a bite on the back of my leg with two white dots in it. There was a small red blood blister near to that (which I now think it might have been the head of the tick that I just wiped off my body). And only within inches of these... the large "bruise" which I now think was the rash. I went to my doctor here and he put me on Doxycycline just in case, but wanted to test me for a slew of other things first (like Mono and West Nile). Now I am 5 weeks out from returning from vacation and have been on Doxycyline for only a week and all those other tests came back negative. My doctor told me that he just doesn't know enough about Lyme, so I scheduled with a Lyme Literate doctor here. But i won't be able to get in for another two and a half weeks. My symptoms are getting better, but I have some strange ones mostly bad at night- numbness all over, in particular in my hands and feet, terrible insomnia, and that darn rush of panic. I also looked over at the clock in the middle of the night and it said 12:00. No, it said 1:00, no 12:00. Anyway I did talk to the LLMD and he was terrific and I can't wait to see him, but I do know that since I am on the antibiotic, there is no way to get a good accurate reading of a Lyme Disease test or co-infections. So, until I get in to see him, am I doing everything that I can right now? I know that time is of the essence here, so I want to be smart. I am on 100 mg of the Doxy twice a day, I avoid dairy, and I am taking the probiotic pills. I am in particular worried about the numbness and also a squeezing pressure in my left arm/pain. I went to the ER on Sunday because it was so bad, but the ER doctor essentially laughed at me for thinking that it was Lyme Disease and dismissed me. There you have it, the ups and downs of doctors that don't live on the east coast. Also, another question I have is -- Do I have a chance that all of these symptoms will go away after a full round of antibiotics, or now that it has already disseminated, am I in it for the long haul no matter what? Thank you so much for any information. I really appreciate having others to talk with about this.

Your LLMD will probably adjust your dose of antibiotics and send you for lab work. From what I understand, the earlier it is diagnosed the easier it is to treat so you are on the right path! I get a lot of anxiety at night too. A detox bath really seems to help me. I found the directions for them on the New to Lyme thread. Also, your GP may be able to give you something mild to help with your insomnia and anxiety until you can see a LLMD. Being sleep deprived really makes things so much worse. Finally, I found that reading up on Lyme has helped me understand what's going on. I just finished "Why Can't I Get Better" by Dr. Horowitz which was super helpful

I know it's hard but just hang in there for your appointment.

I'm in a very similar boat to you dsacoda. I went to the ER two weeks ago after what I suspect was a reaction to a tick bite. I developed a small bump on my neck after finding a tick in that area. It didn't develop a rash, but rather grew into a large lesion that became infected, causing most of the lymph nodes in my neck to swell. I developed a migraine that lasted for two weeks regardless of what I took for it. And my joints and muscles began to hurt a lot more than normal.

At the hospital, they tested me for all those things to and did a spinal tap. They tested for Lyme, but the infectious disease doc said that even if I had it, it would come up as negative because it had only been 12 days since the bite.

She gave me a 10-day dose of doxy, but luckily I was seeing my neurologist a few days later and she gave me three more months of doxy, saying that 10-14 days isn't going to help at all. So right now I'm just biding my time, taking my doxy, using a dry brush daily, and taking foot baths. Two weeks in and my lymph nodes have gone down again and the headache finally went away, so I'll take that as progress. I'll also get tested again when I'm 6-8 weeks out from the bite.