I went home from the ER with some antibiotics for a kidney infection I did not have. I got slightly better. Better enough to drag myself back to finish student teaching and a few weeks later I graduated. But I continued to suffer all the symptoms of my original illness, except it wasn’t quite as bad. I wasn’t stuck in bed. But I wasn’t better.
I tried to pretend I was fine, as life was busy with teacher certification exams, my kids, work, all sorts of things. I couldn’t eat without anti nausea pills. It was horrible. I began to lose massive amounts of weight. I finally decided I had to see another Doctor. By now it had been over a year since I’d gotten sick.
I will always believe my Internist, who had been a great doctor would have figured it out from the start. But he’d left his practice to join a hospital. I had previously had experiences I didn’t like with his partner when he was on vacation, so I didn’t want to see her. But she had a different partner. So I made an appointment, and went to him with my long list of symptoms, feeling horrible.
No appetite, constant nausea, vomiting, muscle pain, joint pain, nerve pain, electric shock feeling all over, chills, soaking night sweats, crushing fatigue, headache and head pressure, stiff neck and neck pain. Now I could add some dog itive function issues to the symptoms. An avid reader, I couldn’t read at all, I couldn’t remember how to do tasks I’d known forever like cooking and computers.
I explained the entire story, the symptoms, and also explained the vague strange symptoms that you feel foolish even describing that I was experiencing of being off balance and feeling like I was a magnet and the world was metal so I couldn’t move.
He ordered some basic labs. cBC, CMP. Thyroid, a western blot for Lyme, a test for Ehrlichia and a test for babesia. (Please note a western blot is proven as accurate as flipping a coin.)
There’s never anything in my CMP really, low urea, this time low AST, my white cells were high, but not as high as before. I’ll show you my CBC
The western blot was positive only for band 23 (IGM), (this is a Lyme specific band. If it is positive you’ve been exposed to the Lyme spirochete.) Ehrlichia was negative, babesia was negative.
So this guy, this Doctor of Internal Medicine, he says, he thinks the hospital was correct about the kidney infection as my white cell count was better (still high) he actually said, to my face, I just need some Flonase. ( A corticosteroid nasal spray for allergies. )
Not a single one of my symptoms say allergy to me. In fact, it was so ludicrous to me, that even as uneducated as I was on medical matters at this time, I asked him about it. I said I didn’t see how that could possibly help. But in a nice way that I now forget….And he said I should just use it for a month or two and then I’d start to feel better. he was sure. Come back next year. He said.
I went home and I read about the steroid, I debated, and I spoke to my partner and I decided there was no way in hell I was going to take that medicine for what was wrong with me. Not only did I not have allergies, my immune system definitely didn’t need to be suppressed further by a steroid. I’d need a Different plan.
Now, I live in a very small town. One day, scrolling my Facebook feed, I discovered this doctor was now married to a lady who was my babysitter when I was a small child. That’s ironic. She used to keep me safe when I was small….he sent me home to die from 15 tick born diseases as an adult.
For a long time he also spoke weekly on a local AM radio station. I can’t say I ever heard his show….but I sure can imagine. Maybe he still does. I don’t know.
Ticks are for the Birds 