Life After Lyme Disease

I had my appointment with an infectious disease specialist today. The Doctor seemed very casual about it, almost like it’s not a big deal. That did not make me feel all that good about this Doctor but I will give him a chance.

He asked me a long list of questions trying to narrow down my symptoms and try to evaluate how far the Lyme Disease has spread throughout my body.  Based on that the Doctor said that he thinks I had Lyme Disease for less then a year.

He prescribed Doxycycline 100MG twice a day for 30 days saying that it should clear it up fairly quickly. Hopefully it will work. He also gave me a referral to get a cardiogram done to make sure that the Lyme Disease did not spread to my heart. He said it was just precautionary.

I’m really hoping the Doxycycline will work.

The following is a list of labs across the USA that test ticks for Lyme Disease.

Analytical Services, Inc.
Williston, VT
800-723-4432, www.analyticalservices.com
PCR: $75, dead or alive. Ziplock bag, no tape, overnight it. Turn-around time: 2 weeks.

Connecticut Pathologies Laboratories, Inc.
Willimantic, CT
860-423-2775
PCR test: $49, dead or alive, Lyme Disease only. Turn-around time: 1 week.

IgeneX, Inc.
Palo Alto, CA
800-832-3200, www.igenex.com
PCR test: $55, dead or alive. Can test for 5 things @ $55/test.
Turn-around time: 10 to 12 business days; ziplock bag.

Medical Diagnostic Laboratories
Mt. Laurel, NJ
877-269-0090
PCR test: $155 plus doctor’s prescription; dead or alive

New Jersey Division of Health and Senior Services
Division of Public Health and Environmental Laboratories
Trenton, NJ
609-292-5819
$25 for Lyme disease test; $35 for both Lyme disease and rocky mountain spotted fever. (Check for new pricing.) Live ticks only. Send in film container or other hard container with moist cotton ball. No baggies.

New Jersey Laboratories
New Brunswick, NJ
732-249-0148, 877-TICK-TEST
Culture: $60, freshly dead or alive with no chemicals used to remove tick, Lyme Disease
PCR: $175, dead or alive

In a labor intensive PCR Test (Preliminary Chain Reaction), a lab technician searches for the DNA of the pathogen on dead or live ticks. Send in whole ticks. “Anytime you have a piece of an organism missing, there’s always the possibility you can miss identifying the pathogen,” is advised by Sean P. Healy an entomologist with the mosquito commission.

In an antigen test, the surface of the organism is detected. “We look specifically for the bacteria that causes Lyme Disease, Borrelia burgdorferi,” says Janine Banks, client services supervisor at Analytical Services, Inc.

If any of you know of any other labs that test ticks for Lyme disease please let me know so that I can add them to this list.

Over the past couple of days I’ve been trying to figure out when I got Lyme Disease. Since I did not experience a rash it is difficult to say with any certainty.

One particular camping trip to Harriman State Park in late spring or early summer of 2007 makes me think that I picked it up that weekend. It was several days after this trip that I remember feeling tightness in my jaw and having a stiff neck for about 5-7 days. It went away on it’s own and I didn’t think much of it at the time.

I usually spend a lot of time in the woods going hiking or camping every other weekend. There is nothing I love to do more than exploring our wilderness areas.

I have always been very careful and usually use bug repellent containing DEET whenever I go to the woods. However there are a hand full of times in 2007 that I remember getting to the woods, realizing that I was all out of bug repellent and going for a hike anyway since I was already there and it would be too time consuming to turn around and go back to try to find some bug spray. Now I wish I had.