Is Lyme Disease Debilitating?
Every year about 20,000 new cases of lyme disease are reported. Although doctors are starting to understand the disease better, many of its aspects are still poorly understood. One of the questions still heavily debated is whether lyme disease is debilitating.
In its initial stages, lyme disease is most commonly noted by the skin rashes it causes. At this point, it is important to get treatment immediately. This is because the disease will grow into its chronic form with time. Chronic lyme disease is also known as post treatment lyme disease since it develops after a failure in treating the original form of the disease.
At this stage, lyme disease will affect the muscles and joint and will result in debilitation of the patient. The spirochetes can also spread to different parts of the body and affect the nervous system, leading to problems in moving parts of the body. At its chronic stage, the disease will also cause trouble with the reproductive system, heart and blood circulation and the skin.
How to Avoid Getting Debilitated
To avoid getting to the chronic stage of lyme disease, you will need to make sure your disease is diagnosed early and treated. In many cases, patients progress to the post treatment stage because of self treating or visiting under qualified doctors. Self treating may appear to be cheaper but is never the best option. In the long run, you will have to spend much more money treating the advanced stage of the disease. Whether you are using respources from the internet or from a book written by a doctor, you still need to see the doctor for proper diagnosis and treatment. Since doctors have more experience treating the disease, they are the best chance that you will get well.
Of similar importance is the choice of doctor to visit. Unlike other diseases which have been extensively studied for long periods, lyme disease is still poorly understood even by the professionals. Many disagreements exist when it comes to the disease. What this means, for you as a patient, is that not all doctors will approach the problem in the same way. And this means you should not expect the same results from all the doctors. In fact, many people who end up debilitated by lyme disease wasted a lot of the treatment time going from bad doctor to bad doctor, and never getting positive results.
If you want to locate a good doctor, then you have to check the doctor’s history with the disease. This is even more important than the doctor’s credentials since it can indicate whether the doctor is capable of treating you or not. Before enlisting the services of any doctor, find out how many lyme disease patients the doctor has treated in the past, and how many were successfully treated. Also find out how many were not successfully treated. This information will help you decide whether the doctor is qualified to treat you or not.
Also remember that in the initial stages of lyme disease, the symptoms may disappear. If you got bitten by a tick, it is best to place your stake on you having lyme disease. Even if the symptoms are initially suppressed, the disease will still develop to its chronic stage and end up debilitating you.
In this way, you will avoid wasting time and get properly diagnosed and treated early.
