Dear Quahog, I am in complete agreement with SarahO. I went from doctor to doctor after taking an engorged tick that was attached to the back of my head to a reputable Lab in August of 1989 it was dismissed with,"We don't have Lyme disease in Texas." From the day I took the tick in, my whole life changed!! A once very active jogger, tennis player, wife, mother of three, working as a part time OB registered nurse, I became an invalid with extreme fatigue, dizzy spells, eye floaters that developed over a two month period and were so extreme that the eye doctor I saw was certain I must have an injured my eye. I kept going back to the doctors for tests for anemia, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, never thinking to bring up the tick incident because I had already been told that it did not exist in Texas. The tests were negative. My pain level was unbelievable with headaches that were diagnosed as Migraine. This did not make sense to me because it was not just one sided and sometimes I just got the bright storm (aura) in my line of vision without the terrible pain. Pain jumping from joint to joint. Swelling of my knees. My family was very concerned because I had stopped all activities and had to quit my job as a nurse, without a diagnosis. Just before one of the two shoulder surgeries I had, a doctor was concerned that I had an abundance of neutrophils (white blood cell). I asked what he thought and he said that he would clear me for surgery, but he felt I should address this with a hematologist. We were constantly moving with the military and a referral to a hematologist wasn't needed according to my patient care manager. As time went on I decided with all the symptoms and no diagnosis that I must need to see a psychiatrist because my family felt I had some underlying condition. This was now 1992. I remember sitting in the office wondering if I was a head case. The doctor spent 15 minutes going over my medical records with me and talking as he read. He said that if he had had all the tests and surgeries I had had since 1989 that he would be depressed. ( By then I had tumors removed from both feet. Arthroscopic shoulder, knee aspirations for fluid, multiple bladder and one kidney infection that took months to clear. Sinus infection one after the other, shingles, thumb joint that should be replaced and a spinal series that had a rather fast degeneration of plain old arthritis.) To get back to the point, talking with me, he felt I was not depressed, but definitely had a syndrome or undiagnosed disease. I asked if he could run a test since I wanted to go back to my family with something. He said he could do an MMPI. The results were given to me a month later. I was a very well adjusted person that related to men and women as people rather than differently because of their sex and that was good in my field of nursing. After this episode I decided that I would try to exercise at the gym. Since the tumor removal on the right foot I had a great deal of pain on the ball of my foot and like everything else---WHY? I started Nordic Tracking and got up to 45 minutes Mon. through Fri. and did light weights on opposite days. I would go home, shower, and then sleep for two hours, but I was exercising! The pains that I had been suffering through the years were helped slightly with pain medication. I learned to live with the right eye of little use. The auras came and went. It seems so did my life. My families nickname for me was Einstein, because I was forgetful and seem to ask many questions over and over. In 1995 we moved from the Army War College to Ft. Carson in Colorado Springs. It was difficult getting used to the altitude. I continued with the extreme fatigue, dizzy spells, brain fog, joint pain, forgetfulness, and starting getting grumpy. My husband left his job as a Dentac Commander in Pa. for his new post as a residency director for a great group of young dentists. I was so envious of them all. There were white water raft trips, hiking Pike's Peak, skiing, and I was lucky to still get to the gym and do the little exercise I could. In August of 1999 I had a brain rupture and I must say this probably saved my life. I was air lifted to Denver University. In recovery the doctor asked me questions and I could barely stutter the answers. I knew I was in for a long haul. He told me the next two weeks in ICU would be two of the worst of my life because they would awaken me every hour on the hour. They were two of the best weeks I had in 10 years. Within three days my right eye was back. I felt great by the end of the first week. The foggy brain was gone, pain had abated, no auras, still dizzy but that is to be expected with the surgery that I had. I thought it must have been a faulty brain artery causing my problems since Aug. of 1989. While I was in rehab. to learn to walk straight and talk again without a stutter, my daughter, a second year dental student, was at a conference and the patient that was being discussed was a man that had gone through the same surgeries, infections, symptoms--to include a brain rupture and his diagnosis was LYME DISEASE. My daughter called home and told her father to get me to Penrose Hospital and send my blood to IGENEX Lab. We did and the test came back positive for Lyme (Borrelia Burgdorferi.) The reason I had felt so good in the ICU was that they were infusing Rocephin in one of my IV's. That happens to be one of the medication used in stubborn Lyme disease. We took the results to my doctor at Ft. Carson and he discussed this with several other doctors and they decided to give me two more weeks of Rocephin IV because I had probably had the disease since 1989 when I had taken in an engorged tick that I got ridding horses the day before in the Hill Country of San Antonio. I was back to me again and I was so happy. Because of the brain surgery, I could not leave Colorado Springs until the swelling of the ventricles was gone. If you should change altitudes it could cause a possible stroke and Colorado Springs is more than a mile high. My husband was assigned to Ft. Sam Houston to become the director of the graduate dental residency programs. I joined him in January of 2000. About a month after we got back to Ft. Sam the symptoms started again. I got an asap referral to infectious disease. That was a real eye opener! I told the doctor I had Lyme disease and he asked what meds. I had been on and I told him the whole story and the 10 years of Hell I had been through. He said with the amount of Rocephin that I had I most likely did not have Lyme disease any longer. I also told him that I was having sweats on a cyclical basis and was worried maybe I had malaria. He just about laughed me out of the office. He said I had "Post Lyme Syndrome." I would have to live with it. Malaria was not possible because my husband and I had not been stationed anywhere that would have put us in danger of this disease. No medication was given and I ended up barely able to make it down the hallway to the bathroom. Thank the Lord Above that tour was only two years. We came back to Ft. Carson for my husband's final tour with the Army and by now I was using a wheelchair part of the time and my oxygen saturations were so low that I started on oxygen. I was found to have sleep Apnea. Luckily, my doctor treated me with oral antibiotics. They did help some, but not like the Rocephin I had had back in 1999. In 2004 Dr. David Martz opened The Rocky Mtn. Chronic Disease Clinic. Dr. Martz himself had been misdiagnosed with ALS and went down to Texas (where they don't have Lyme disease.) He was treated by a Lyme Literate doctor who put him on six months of IV Rocephin. After a 75% recovery, Dr. Martz came back and started treating people like me. My spine was degenerating and I had a neck fusion, followed by another tumor removal of the right foot and in May of 2005 I was referred to Dr. Martz's clinic and had a whole new series of blood tests sent to IGENEX Lab and I was found to have two types of Borrelia (Lyme Spirochete) and a co-infection Babesia WA1 and Babesia microti. The Babesia explained the malaria type symptoms and the possible brain aneurysm rupture. I took the results to the Army doctor and Ft. Carson placed the chest catheter and Tricare delivered the IV's weekly for 8 months. Then I got a letter stating that the IV treatment was not FDA approved and if I wanted to continue it would be at our cost. The amount of Rocephin was 4 grams daily. My cost was $2000.00 a week. I cried and cried, but my husband and I knew that I was doing well and the doctor had tried taking me off the IV meds at about 5 months and all the symptoms came back within two weeks. I was taking oral mephron for the babesia along with IV azithromycin and IV Flagyl. The borrelia spirochete has l33 genes and it can drop it's cell wall and move into the patients individual cell where it becomes a cyst form and when this happens it takes a long time to treat. Remember I went 10 years with this disease moving throughout my body and brain. I am sorry to say our clinic closed in July of 2007. Dr. Martz was treating patients from all over the world and he was getting tired. Even the doctor that had treated him in Texas came up here to live and work. Dr. William Harvey is really more into research. I saw him most of the time because my case was complicated with co-infections. In February, I will see a doctor out in San Francisco and hope he will help me to find an end to this disease. I am taking pain meds, glyconutrients, vitamins, oral actigal to save my liver, IV rocephin 500mg.daily, IV azithromycin 250mg every other day, IV Flagyl 250mg daily. So it is important that you see a Lyme Literate doctor because of the complications this disease can present. Oct. 3rd. The Infectious Disease Association wrote an article that stated that Lyme Disease could be cured with two to four weeks of doxicycline and that might be the case if a patient is treated right away, but there are many patients like myself that did not get treated because we were told there was no Lyme in the area that we were in. They are now finding a strong link from Borrelia to other syndromes like alzheimer's, ms, als, gulf war syndrome, chronic fatigue, lupus to name just a few. This disease destroys the immune system if left untreated. This past June I had a Herpes panel and the tumor necrosis was off the charts, as was epstein bar and cytomegalovirus and several other herpes which explains my bouts with shingles. So please get to a Lyme Literate Patient Care Manager. I can be reached at 719-440-9915. My Best to You, Pam