Hi Mike,
Welcome to our community! In your time reading here, did you read through the "New to Lyme? Start here!" thread that sits at the top of the forum? It's packed full of important information, symptom lists, detoxing suggestions, and so much more.
Do you have a copy of your Western Blot? If you do, would you be willing to post the results? By looking at the bands that show up as + or IND - we can tell you if you have any bands that are Lyme specific that are showing up positive. If you do, then you definitely have Lyme, as there is only one way the bacteria can get in your blood so that you test positive.
But even if you don't have any of the Lyme specific bands positive or IND, it surely doesn't meant that you don't have Lyme disease, as the test relies on the immune system response, and Lyme disease is well-known to suppress the immune response - and should you have another tick-borne infection, like Bartonella, then the immune response is compromised even more -making the tests fairly unreliable for ruling out Lyme disease.
Unfortunately, we still have only a very small handful of properly educated doctors in this country, known as LLMD's (Lyme Literate Medical Doctors), so most doctors wouldn't hardly recognize Lyme disease if it introduced itself to them. These doctors that are educated properly get their education through ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society).
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/LLND 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 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 can also now email TBDA (Tick Borne Disease Alliance) at
[email protected]
and ask for LLMD referrals also.
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. Go to the ILADS site to read the new (2014) Treatment guidelines to get you started on your Lyme journey.
www.ilads.org/lyme/ILADS_Guidelines.pdf