When a Doctor Dismissed Lyme Disease
Sometimes the hardest part of Lyme disease isn’t the infection itself — it’s what happens when a doctor dismisses Lyme disease before the patient truly recovers.
This is one patient’s story. But it echoes thousands I’ve heard in my practice.
He sat across from me, eyes tired but steady — “I was told it wasn’t Lyme disease,” he said. “Then my doctor stopped returning my calls.”
It wasn’t malice — it was resignation. After months of antibiotics, the symptoms lingered: joint pain, brain fog, exhaustion that made walking to the mailbox feel like a marathon. The doctor had run out of protocols and called it “post-infectious fatigue.”
The patient heard something different: You’re on your own.
When Treatment Ends but the Illness Doesn’t
For many people, the end of antibiotic therapy doesn’t mark the end of Lyme disease. Up to 90% of patients with post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS) report cognitive symptoms such as brain fog, memory issues, and slowed processing.
When symptoms continue after a doctor dismisses Lyme disease, patients often feel confused and alone. Ongoing immune system activity, co-infections such as Babesia or Bartonella, and issues with the body’s automatic functions can all keep symptoms going long after standard treatment ends.
Why Care Sometimes Ends Too Soon
Most physicians enter medicine to help, not to walk away. But chronic Lyme disease challenges the tools they’ve been given.
When standard testing is negative and symptoms persist, doctors face a dilemma: continue searching beyond the guidelines or conclude the infection has resolved.
Many physicians want to do more — but face real limits with time constraints, insurance coverage and medical board treatment guidelines that they must adhere to.
It’s not that they don’t believe their patients; it’s that the system doesn’t make it easy to keep searching for answers. Complex, multi-system illnesses like chronic Lyme disease require time, coordination, and flexibility — all things that modern healthcare rarely allows.
The issue isn’t that individual doctors don’t care — it’s that the system rewards speed and efficiency over thorough, patient-centered care.
Controversy and Uncertainty in Lyme Disease Care
The difficulty deepens because Lyme disease itself remains one of the most debated conditions in medicine. Different organizations interpret the same science in very different ways. Some recognize only short-term infection, others acknowledge prolonged or recurrent illness.
Many doctors feel stuck between different opinions on how Lyme disease should be treated, unsure how much they can safely do beyond the usual guidelines.
That uncertainty doesn’t mean doctors don’t care. It means the boundaries around them aren’t yet clear — and patients often feel those limits most acutely.
When a Doctor Dismisses Lyme Disease
Many patients recognize the same turning point — when follow-up visits get shorter, the questions shift, and their pain starts to feel like just another form to fill out. It’s not about blaming anyone. It’s about the silence that happens when medicine doesn’t yet have the words to explain what you’re going through.
That silence between “I don’t know” and “There’s nothing more I can do” can feel like losing an ally in the middle of a fight.
He Didn’t Give Up
Months later, the patient found another clinician willing to re-evaluate his case. And, a Babesia was identified. Targeted therapy and gradual rehabilitation followed. He’s not cured, but he is living again — working part-time, reading without losing focus, and walking his dog every morning.
His recovery began the moment someone believed him again.
Don’t Give Up on Yourself
If your doctor dismissed Lyme disease, don’t give up on yourself.
Chronic Lyme disease recovery takes persistence, compassion, and partnership. Sometimes the right diagnosis — or the right doctor — makes all the difference.
