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 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 bites, while others struggle with constipation, diarrhea, or an uncomfortable
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Touch-evoked pain is a symptom many Lyme disease patients struggle to describe—and even more struggle to have believed. When clothing brushing against skin, a gentle touch, or cool air causes pain, it reflects a documented neurologic change, not imagination. This abnormal pain response has a name: allodynia. In simple terms, allodynia means the nervous system
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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 Many patients worry that it may be too late to treat a tick bite, especially when symptoms appear months or even years after the initial exposure. This concern is understandable—but the answer is reassuring. It is never truly too late to
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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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Lyme Misdiagnosis Apology: When Silence Hurts More Than the Mistake My patient couldn’t understand why an “I’m sorry” never came. His experience captures the need for a Lyme misdiagnosis apology—the simple act of acknowledgment that can mean more than any prescription. Too often, persistent Lyme disease misconceptions lead to years of suffering before patients receive
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Lyme Disease Second Opinion: What to Do When Specialists Disagree When specialists disagree about Lyme disease, patients ask me this question every week: should I get a second opinion? It usually comes at a breaking point—not because they have lost faith in medicine, but because no one is stepping back to connect the pieces. They
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