Losing Friends Because of Chronic Illness: Why It Happens When You’re Sick Losing friends because of chronic illness is a question patients with Lyme disease ask me quietly, often with more pain than any physical symptom they describe. They are not angry. They are grieving. As illness persists, plans are canceled, energy fades, and life […]
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When Being Dismissed Hurts More Than the Illness A patient once said to me, quietly and without anger, during a conversation about medical gaslighting and Lyme disease: “The hardest part wasn’t the Lyme. It was being told it couldn’t be Lyme.” She said it carefully, almost as if she were still weighing whether she would
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Lyme Disease Digestion Problems: Why Symptoms Often Don’t Make Sense Lyme disease digestion problems are common, and many patients notice that digestion is one of the first systems to feel “off.” Meals that were once routine may now trigger nausea, bloating, abdominal discomfort, or unpredictable bowel changes. Some people feel full after only a few
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Pain From Light Touch in Lyme Disease (Allodynia Explained) Quick Answer: Allodynia in Lyme disease occurs when the nervous system misinterprets normal touch—such as clothing or light pressure—as pain. This reflects altered sensory processing, even when standard tests are normal. Touch-evoked pain is a symptom many Lyme disease patients struggle to describe—and even more struggle
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Why Lyme Disease Persists and What Tuberculosis Teaches Us In the world of infectious disease, few organisms are as stubborn as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. But understanding why Lyme disease persists after treatment may require looking at what TB has taught us about bacterial survival. For more on latent TB, see the CDC’s tuberculosis overview. We call
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Bad Signs After a Tick Bite: 7 Warnings You Shouldn’t Ignore Based on clinical experience caring for patients with tick-borne illness. It often begins with something easy to dismiss. A small rash that fades. A few days of fatigue. A headache that doesn’t quite make sense.These are the bad signs after a tick bite that
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How to Test for Lyme Disease: Beyond CDC Guidelines When patients ask how to test for Lyme disease, they’re often surprised by the complexity—and the limitations—of the current testing system. While laboratory tests can be helpful, they do not tell the whole story. Clinical judgment is often just as important, especially when symptoms persist despite
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Is It Too Late to Treat a Tick Bite? What Patients Need to Know Is it too late to treat a tick bite? Many patients worry the answer is yes—especially when symptoms appear months or even years after exposure. This concern is understandable, but the answer is more reassuring than most expect. It is never
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Can You Recover From Lyme Disease? What to Expect Many patients ask whether they can recover from Lyme disease, and the answer is often yes—though recovery timelines vary. I’ve seen patients improve quickly when the diagnosis is made early, and I’ve also worked with patients who recovered more gradually after months or even years of
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When One Side of Your Body Feels Different One-sided symptoms in Lyme disease can be alarming for patients, especially when weakness or numbness affects only one side of the body during flare-ups. Some patients report that an arm, a leg, the face, or even an entire side of the body feels weaker, numb, heavier, or
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