New to this..frustrated.. Does this sound like Lyme disease

My symptoms started about 6 months ago. It started with lower back pain, then pain in my leg muscles, now joint pain that's in my hip, knees, and ankles (moves around). Then I became really fatigued, I can sleep 8 hours and never feel like I got enough sleep. Any exercise I do even just walking I get tired really easy. I also have head aches here and there and often have a stiff neck. Also my muscles feel sore even with the tiniest amount of work. My lymphnodes swell from time to time. I am now recently dealing with brain fog but it comes and goes. I'll go a feel days feeling good then a few feeling completely awful.

I've been to multiple doctors with no diagnosis yet, I'm getting frustrated and depressed. I work in an environment where I'm in woods and high grass most of the day but I never found a bulleye rash.

Does this sound like Lyme?

Yes. Sounds like Lyme PLUS coinfections. Bartonella and Babesia are some of the common ones. There are more.

Welcome to our forum,
If you have been tested already for Lyme by your various doctors, I'm just letting you know the tests can be unreliable.

Many members have tested negative, but have been clinically diagnosed by an experienced Lyme literate MD(LLMD) and do have Lyme and the various co infections.

Starting treatment is very important so the disease doesn't progress and become harder to treat .

Some of the better labs for testing are Igenix, Galaxy and DNA connections.

Sorry you are suffering with these symptoms and I wish you the best of healing, Jo

Hi Ant - A great LLMD will run tests that aren't run by other Dr's like CD57, TNF alpha, Full viral antibody, microtoxin panels (mold, yeast, etc), heavy metals, SPECT scan, tick borne illness tests for IgG, IGM antibodies, PCR's, etc to get a better idea of what's going on.

* None of the tests for Lyme and co-infections are perfect by far but goshawk has a good list. I would also add ArminLabs (sent to Germany) they have some new testing which is showing a lot of promise.

* If you haven't already pick up a book or two. Here's a couple of my favorites to get going "How Can I get Better?", "Healing Lyme" by Stephen Buhner, "Unlocking Lyme". This will help you understand all the testing and treatments.

* If you do DNA Connexions, dr's are now recommending a deep tissue massage (it should not be comfortable) followed by a 6 hour urine collection. Lyme and some co-infections will leave the blood and head deep into tissue. The theory is this process will push some of the bacteria out into the circulatory system and then excrete through the urine for better accuracy. FYI DNA Connexions tiders are longer which could result in more false positives over a lab like IGeneX which uses shorter tiders. But if you have symptoms and postive PCR's that gives you a really good clue of what's going on.

* Determine how you want to be treated. 100% Herbal, just pharmaceuticals or a combination, works with supplements and nutrition, aggressive, slow and steady, etc.

* Find the best Dr that will treat you the way you want. I went to several that I didn't think were good in the end and it was just a waste of time and a lot of money. I ended up going through the ILADS website conference notes and find the Dr's that are presenting to find mine.

Hope that helps and good luck!