Announcer: The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention present Lyme Disease,
One Man's Experience
John: My name is John.
I got Lyme disease last July of 2011.
I was out in the woods camping with my son,
with the Boy Scouts, and we'd been out there for a
week and that's when I got it.
You know being in scouting and being an outdoors type
of person I knew quite a bit about it.
I knew what the symptoms were like and I knew it
was a tickborne disease.
And that it was something that you definitely want
to get checked out if you see any symptoms.
In the evenings when we'd come in from the
activities that we were doing in the field,
I felt an itch on my right hip and didn't think
anything of it because it just seemed like a
mosquito bite, or some other kind of a bite that
would normally itch. And that was about
Wednesday or Thursday that I noticed that.
Later on I checked you know for tick and didn't
see anything there, but later on it presented
itself a bit differently.
Announcer: Early symptoms of Lyme disease can include a
red expanding bull'seye-like rash,
fevers, chills, fatigue, headaches,
muscle and joint aches, swollen lymph nodes and
facial paralysis on one or both sides known as Bell's
palsy.
John: Well I started to feel ill probably,
you know if I'd noticed the itch on Wednesday,
probably by Friday, I started to feel just a
little not quite myself.
Still didn't really connect the two.
By Saturday morning by the time I had gotten home I
was just feeling lethargic, tired,
a little achy.
I'd gone to take a shower after being out in the
woods and, got out of the shower and looked down at
that same area and noticed there was a bright red
bull's eye rash, and so I knew there was something
wrong at that point.
Well, I went and visited Dr. Heaton and Dr. Heaton
took a look at the rash and we talked about
treatment possibilities.
You know he calmed me down a little bit,
I was a little nervous about the whole thing,
given that I'd been bitten by ticks before but had
never seen a rash, and this was the first time I
did and so I was concerned about some of the long
term effects.
Dr. Heaton: Every one of us seems to know somebody
that has dealt with Lyme disease and some of those
people have developed complications that last
longer than others.
Some people are worried about the long term side
effects.
Other people feel like, man, I feel so awful,
I have headaches, I have a rash,
I have body aches and I can't think at work,
how am I going to get back to work in the next two or
three days because I have an important thing to do
in two days from now and they want to be fixed
right away.
John: He told me that it's better to go ahead
and treat it, that there wasn't a need at that
moment to do a test given how it was presenting and
how it was feeling.
He said a round of doxycycline might be the
best method to help me out.
The first couple of days afterwards I was still
kind of feeling achy.
I missed one day of work on Monday feeling kind of
feverish and achy.
But I was back at work by Tuesday.
By the next Saturday I felt fantastic.
I was back to my old self again.
Dr. Heaton: The good news is the vast majority of
people treated for Lyme disease do very,
very well, and I would say that most people see
resolution of some of their symptoms within the
first two or three days, at least starting to.
But it takes up to a few weeks to see complete
resolution of their symptoms that they came
into the office with.
There is a lot out there thanks to the internet in
regards to Lyme disease which is good and bad for
doctors and for patients I think.
It's so common that people have had friends who have
experiences with it, so often by the time that
they come into the office, even if we haven't made
the diagnosis yet, they're already convinced they
have it, they are already concerned about certain
things.
In the area of the Northeast especially and
then also Wisconsin and Minnesota area,
highly endemic areas for Lyme.
Then you really ought to be doing nightly checks
especially during summer months for ticks and so
removing the ticks before you go to bed that night.
John: I think that you know more and more,
you hear about more and more cases it's just very
important you educate yourself about Lyme
disease.
Understand what the symptoms are like and get
yourself to a doctor just as soon as you see or feel
any of those symptoms so they can check you out
professionally.
A couple of things you can do to prevent Lyme disease
is wear insect repellant that's got DEET in it and
spray around the entrances to your clothing.
Check for ticks daily after you've been out in
the woods or near deer.
You can also shower right after and when you take a
shower you can check, check yourself over for
ticks and call your doctor if you have a fever or see
a rash anywhere on your body.
Announcer: Learn more at www.cdc.gov/lyme or
www.cdc.gov/ticks