Information: www.georgialymedisease.org or Dr. Pugliese’s blog at www.tinyurl.com/q3xoq96
If someone tells you Lyme disease doesn’t exist in Georgia, don’t believe them.
Eight years ago our high school daughter, Rachel, was struggling with a mysterious list of medical symptoms. She battled episodes of vertigo and swollen knees. She had headaches, low-grade fevers and an oddly specific abdominal pain.
Years went by as I took her from doctor to doctor seeking answers. One specialist after another ruled out everything from parasites, to diseases, to genetic disorders. She went through blood work, CT scans, MRIs, a lumbar puncture and many things a teenage girl shouldn’t endure. Over 40 illnesses were eliminated, some more than once.
Five years later, Rachel’s symptoms had progressed to involve neurological symptoms including numbness in her legs and arms, insomnia, blurred vision and short-term memory loss. Despite efforts to keep moving forward, she had to take a medical leave from college. She was handicapped and asking about a wheelchair.
I became an expert at how to dig deep within search engines for possible answers. While waiting on results from a third test looking for multiple sclerosis, I came upon the controversial illness Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection spread by a tick bite. It’s controversial, not because medical professionals question its existence, but because doctors don’t believe it exists is in Georgia. More than one doctor told us it couldn’t be Lyme, because Lyme disease isn’t in the south.
Left unchecked, the bacterium slowly spreads throughout the body wreaking havoc. Flu-like symptoms are often the first sign. About half get a bulls-eyed rash. Next the knees and other large joints start to ache and swell.
The deer tick, a tick the size of a poppy seed, spreads the disease.
Lyme disease mimics many other illnesses and available testing isn’t 100 percent accurate. Without a positive test result, other illnesses must be ruled out and a clinical diagnosis made.
Currently, the best available treatment is oral and/or intravenous antibiotics.
Lyme disease was identified in 1975 by researchers in Lyme, Connecticut. Physicians in the northeast are well versed in the disease’s symptoms and treatment options.
Perhaps the doctors who think Lyme hasn’t made it’s way to Georgia believe ticks, deer and other wildlife they travel with, observe state lines.
According to infectious disease specialist Dr. Andrew Pugliese who treats patients in Gwinnett and North Fulton, “Lyme disease is very prevalent in Georgia, but highly under diagnosed.”
In August of 2013, the CDC admitted — I mean adjusted their estimate of the number of Lyme disease patients from 30,000 to 300,000 annually. A doctor with the CDC’s Lyme disease program stated, “We know that routine surveillance only gives us part of the picture, and that the true number of illnesses is much greater.”
After two years of treatment, Rachel is symptom-free. She could have been treated sooner had her doctors just known to suspect Lyme disease.
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