Labs are unfortunately going to get things wrong.

I have autoimmune Addison's disease, so I get blood work every few months no matter what. Out of all of my blood draws with Quest-only once have I had an issue. Sometimes it depends on the specific branch being sloppy, but my experience with Quest in general has been a good one.

I had Lyme disease when I was 10 years old. I had it for a year before it was caught-because it really wasn't well known. This was around 1989, and I live in NJ. We lived next to the woods, and I had ticks on me all the time. I can say this much about Lyme. Doctors are really torn on it. Even a lot doctors who are not LLMDs consider Lyme to be different than your average bacterial disease. It is a spirochete, as is Syphilis, and both have shown to be more difficult to treat, especially in later stages. There has been medical research that shows that the bacteria can morph into more than one form, causing the treatment difficulties. I was on and off antibiotics for a year when first diagnosed, because I kept relapsing with symptoms.

That isn't to say that I don't think a lot of the Lyme Disease boards are full of very obsessed individuals that are misinformed and paying attention to large quantity of pseudoscience...or that I think huge and dangerous doses of antibiotics are really a good treatment, even if chronic Lyme disease were to be a real thing.

The other possibility is that chronic Lyme is more or less an autoimmune issue that got kicked off by a longer term Lyme infection. Most of my current doctors feel that my being very sick with Lyme as a child (I had a range of symptoms before finally getting diagnosed-crossed eyes, almost constant tinnitus, napping all the time, emotional issues, migrating arthritis, headaches-and finally I woke in the night unable to walk-my knees had completely frozen-this is what finally led to my doctor ordering the test, positive blood work, and diagnosis) could have set me up for health problems later in life, such as the autoimmune Addison's I got diagnosed with about 6 years ago.

Now I have small fiber neuropathy of unknown origin, and every possible cause has been explored. My doctors all know of my Lyme background. When I was desperate this past summer, I did go to a Lyme specialist and had three months of intensive antibiotics therapy, just to see if there was improvement. Sorry to say that this was not the case, and I am unwilling to take endless antibiotics hoping to be cured.

Even if chronic Lyme does exist, there is some real divide about how it should be treated. Some doctors-often the LLMDs-are very insistent on antibiotic therapy. I theorize that this probably did help some people who unknowingly had late stage Lyme disease for a very long time. It is entirely possible, especially if you live in the Northeast. Deer ticks are tiny, and can bite in places you can't even see. Not everyone gets a rash, either. I didn't have one as a kid. Blood tests for Lyme can sometimes be misleading in later stages as well, because it ultimately depends on the person's immune system response since you are testing for the antibodies, and not the actual bacteria...and often times in chronic infections, the immune response can become cyclical. There have been individuals who tested negative, but after a few weeks of treatment and retesting, tested positive. A theory for this is that the antibiotics woke up the fight in the person's immune system.

Of course I claim to be no expert, and have no idea whether real Chronic Lyme exists. I do think there are a lot of people who are being drained of their money and resources, and have become completely fanatical about it.

I do personally feel that if one DOES have Lyme disease, late stage, chronic, acute, or otherwise, there would have been a time in which you might be able to pin point when you got it-rash or no rash. I was sick with what was thought to be a flu for about 3 weeks, more than likely this was the initial infection for me, because it was summer, and certainly flu season. I had a very high fever, and was very ill. Once it subsided, the parade of weird, vague, coming and going symptoms began. There was no doubt that there was something wrong with me.

I'm not sure if this has even been helpful, but I wanted to share my thoughts on it any way.