I must repeat how happy I am to have found this forum.
Maybe this is Lymes doing the talking but I am very overwhelmed by the amount of information and the conflicting information that exists in respected publications. I am so confused that I want to ask this group my questions because I can't seem to assimilate and mentally organize everything I am reading. I do have an appt with an infectious disease MD ( reportedly a Lymes doctor), but I really don't know anything about him for sure.
#1. I don't understand how a person can be IgM positive for years, have the numbers increase and have many of the clinical symptoms (but also have reasonable alternate explanations for these many symptoms) and have almost everything I read state that this disease must be diagnosed clinically. Everything I read states that no laboratory test can definitively rule in or out current or chronic Lymes.
Clinically, if I weren't to offer alternative possible causes for my symptoms, and with my lab results as they are and have been, I am definitely positive and chronic. If I volunteer plausible explanations for the myriad of symptoms, the literature suggests that despite the positive IgM, I should be diagnosed as negative.
This conflict is what makes me unsure as to whether I should or shouldn't believe I have chronic Lymes, and whether or not I should go ahead with treatment if that is suggested. If the absolute criteria must be clinical, I don't know how anyone can be absolutely sure specifically what is causing the relevant symptom. And ignoring the financial side of things, I really don't want to put my body through anything more if it isn't going to help, or if it causes me more problems than I have now.
I would really like some input on this from all of you.
Which brings me to these questions:
How many people have been diagnosed, treated and improved or partially improved? If so what changed and to what degree?
Did any of you suffer bad and/or permanent side effects from the treatment?
Do any of you regret getting treated.
Are any of you getting treated not because you think it is helping you, but because you feel that it is preventing the symptoms from getting worse?
Is there a biopsy that can be done which will show spirochetes in almost all cases if you have Lymes?
I would like to post a poll, (but am not sure how to do it), asking most of the above questions.
Post Edited (tazbeau) : 12/12/2008 2:27:55 PM (GMT-7)