Lyme Disease Specialist

Lyme Disease Specialist

Lyme disease is a tick borne disease that is named for a city in Connecticut by the same name because once there were a great number of such cases in that locale. It is highly important to be treated for Lyme disease immediately because if left untreated, Lyme disease will involve the central nervous system, the heart and the joints. The early symptoms involve depression, fatigue, muscle stiffness, skin rashes, meningitis, swollen lymph nodes, headache and fever. However the most important symptom is a circular rash by the name of erythema migrans. This “bullseye” rash does not always appear though, and those in Lyme disease areas have found that the symptoms sometimes appear years after the initial bite.

A Lyme disease specialist will be able to confirm that you have the disease through your symptoms as well as a blood test. Also, a Lyme disease specialist will be more adept at treating your infectious disease. There are many different opinions regarding treatment lately, thus a Lyme disease specialist will have been educated on treatment, read all of the medical reports regarding Lyme disease, and probably will have attended Lyme disease symposiums, and thus will definitely know more about the disease than your general practioner.

As soon as you are diagnosed, Lyme disease specialists will start you on a regimen of antibiotics because it is an infectious disease. You may receive antibiotics through pills or at times intravenously, depending on the severity of your symptoms, the length of time since you bitten by a deer tick, or because the specialist feels that this is better than through the administration of antibiotics by mouth.

When given by mouth a Lyme disease specialist may give you cefuroxime, doxycycline or amoxicillin, depending on the length of your disease as well as your tolerance for these antibiotics. Should the Dr. feel that you need antibiotics intravenously then you will probably receive ceftriaxone or cefuroxime. Ordinarily because you will need to receive this daily for at least 30 days, the Dr. will have an IV port inserted into your veins so that a visiting nurse can administer the antibiotics easily.

Most Lyme disease specialists have noted that when a course of antibiotics are begun, the patient feels much worse for the first two days, but then begins to feel better. The same specialists have noted that often symptoms of the disease will remain long after the antibiotics have run their course and the disease no longer can be found in the blood. At this point, there are specialists who feel that further treatments are necessary lest the infection become chronic. This is a bone of contention at this time as some groups of specialists feel that the disease is caused by a group of co-infections, and thus need different antibiotics to treat them. Others promulgate other aggressive treatments.

Regardless of how your Lyme disease specialist feels about this medical controversy, be aware that if your symptoms do recur or never leave after being declared “cured” that you may be one of the unfortunate ones that the controversy is all about. You may need yet another Lyme disease specialist if that is the case.