Can’t See The Forrest for The Trees

One of the most frustrating things for a person with Lyme disease is looking into the rolling eyes of a doubtful doctor who is asking you “Where did you get Lyme?  Have you been to Connecticut lately?”

I swear my Rheumatologist thinks the only way someone can get Lyme is if they douse themselves in fresh blood and roll around the river banks in Lyme, Connecticut, in the exact spot where the children whose Lyme cases made history were playing when they contracted it. These children were originally diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis.

While staring at my lab results showing a high positive for Lyme, and knowing that my case had to be reported to the Center for Disease Control, he told me that Lyme didn’t exist in Texas, and wanted to know “where on earth” I had contracted it.  Uh, dude, not only does Lyme disease exist in Texas, it exists right here in your F$%##@! office, you eye rolling jerk.

I don’t necessarily expect him to know a lot about Lyme, except that it is a pretty obvious diagnostic rule-out for Rheumatoid Arthritis.  There is even a type of arthritis called “Lyme arthritis”.  He would be totally offended if my Lyme doctor had said Rheumatoid Arthritis is an old person’s disease and “doesn’t exist” in young women.    It seems a rheumatologist worth his salt would at least be more aware of a disease that often presents itself as arthritis.

But, sadly, he isn’t the minority when it comes to Lyme stupidity.  I have had more than one doctor stare at me blankly, or smirk when I say I have Lyme.

It amazes me that I spend a boat load of money to see doctors because of their education, training, and experience, yet these same people don’t believe that a tick can find its way across a state line, or can be a stowaway on an airline passenger’s luggage.

Does it really take such high level thinking to realize that bugs can migrate, and that the northeast is not the only area for Lyme? Does it mean anything to them that the West Nile Virus is no longer contained in West Nile?

And the reason the “Lyme disease doesn’t exist in Texas” myth is still around is just pure politics and greed.  In fact, the combined confirmed and probable Lyme cases reported to the CDC puts Texas in 15th place in the nation, up 428% over a two-year period.  Texas has one of the highest incidences of Lyme in pets in the nation.  (I guess our pet dogs and cats have been traveling to Connecticut without us knowing).  Reported cases in humans are up 77% throughout the nation during the same two year period.  Of course, the CDC admits their surveillance criteria is not the same as diagnostic criteria, and that Lyme is severely underreported.  Read that again:  their own estimates are that there are somewhere between 211,188 and 422,376 cases a year.

I will tell you what doesn’t exist in Texas:  good Lyme disease doctors.