Posted 8/10/2014 9:11 PM (GMT 0)
this was just shared on FB by the Weather Channel, apologies if it's been posted before.
This is good, but you have to click thru all 10 pages to see the entire article
By Annie Hauser Published: May 30, 2014, 10:29 AM EDT
http://www.weather.com/health/signs-you-may-have-lyme-disease-and-not-know-it-20140520?cm_ven=FB_JK_52714_9?cm_ven=FB_HEALTH_JK_80814_22
Summer is the season of Lyme disease, a bacterial infection transmitted to humans through the bites of blacklegged ticks.
Lyme is the most commonly reported vector-borne illness in the country. More than 20,000 cases are reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention every year, but experts believe upwards of 300,000 individuals are infected annually. The CDC reports that 95 percent of cases in 2012 were concentrated to 13 states in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, where the tick is native.
But like many insect-carried diseases, Lyme is spreading thanks to climate change. Warmer weather across the continent has spread the home turf of Lyme-carrying ticks, numerous studies have found, including a recent one published in Environmental Health Perspectives (PDF).
That’s why it was so difficult for Ryan Bell (pictured above), a sixth grader from Jacksonville, Florida, to be diagnosed with the disease, his mother Melissa told weather.com.
"In 2011, our then 11-year-old son suddenly began suffering from a variety of predominantly neurological symptoms, including severe headaches, vertigo, insomnia, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, balance problems, hypersensitivity to sight/sound/touch and joint pain, forcing him to discontinue his various sports and causing him to struggle at school for the first time," Bell, who now works with the Florida Lyme Disease Association, said. "Our son had migraines so severe that he required intravenous morphine to relieve the pain. We are still haunted by his heart-wrenching, desperate cries for help."
Another reason why Lyme is so complicated is that the symptoms are widely varied — and might appear to be a variety of other conditions and infections.
...Flu-like symptoms, including fever and chills, are early signs of Lyme, Dr. Layden said. If you seek medical attention at this stage, the disease is quite treatable, she added, noting that most patients recover with just a dose of oral antibiotics.
Without immediate treatment, the antibiotics course becomes more severe. "If an individual or patient has a more severe disease, brain, spinal cord or heart problems, they may require antibiotics through an IV," Dr. Layden said.
Cont'd at link