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For instance, my FM started after being rear-ended by a car going 60 miles an hour on January 19, 1989. A little checking of my papers could probably tell me the exact minute that accident occurred! Two years after the accident, when I could no longer bear the pain and the brainfog, FM was diagnosed by a Rheumatologist I was referred to by a co-worker who thought I might have Multiple Sclerosis.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was diagnosed mainly at my insistence since the FM treatment had done nothing to ease any of its symptoms and, in fact, my fatigue seemed to be worsening. CFS, like Fibromyalgia, is a diagnosis of "exclusion," meaning that _every_ other disease that could cause my symptoms had to be ruled out. Only then could the diagnosis of FM and/or CFS be given. Along the way to getting those diagnoses, I went to a Psychiatrist who pumped me full of SSRI’s (antidepressants). By the time I got to my CFS guru, I had been taking four at the same time, endangering me to develop Serotonin Syndrome that could have led to cardiac arrest.
Years later when Lyme Disease was found, a little introspection led me to the belief that my tick bit me in 1985 on the Mohawk Trail in upstate NY. I walked a portion of that Trail as I recuperated from my hysterectomy for endometriosis. Although I have no records of any immediate medical care, I do know that I had a rash I thought was ringworm that I _think_ occurred around that time. I also developed pneumonia in the summer of '85, the cause of which was supposed to be my previously unknown chronic relapsing Epstein-Barr (one of the Herpes viruses). Since Lyme was supposedly confined to the Lyme, Connecticut area and couldn't jump across the border to NY, I doubt that those early Lyme Disease tests were even performed. I had also lived in Massachusetts but that was in the early ‘60’s.
If I had participated in any study for any of these diseases and had to recount my history, people interested in the scientific method (meaning that things which can’t be proven probably wouldn’t be considered valid nor bear much weight), I would have been considered a regular nut case as I made all these suppositions.
The history also means I’ve hit the Trifecta…trauma (from surgery, from a car accident, and from an infection), autoimmune problems (the endometriosis), psychiatric problems (depression), and a genetic predisposition (Mom had FM along with her Parkinson’s). And lest I forget, childhood molestation
Given the right audience, some doctors would set me up for a research program to help prove their bias that all patients with these diseases share trauma, autoimmune problems, genetic predisposition, and, especially, psychiatric problems. No testing for any possible immune deficiencies (I have IgG, IgM, and IgA deficiencies along with low CD4 and NK cells) viral load, (i.e., co-infections like my Mycoplasma, Epstein-Barr, Herpes Simplex, and HHV-6 but not Erlichiosis or Babesiosis), or blood irregularities (amino acid deficiencies). All of these things were tested by my CFS guru years before the Lyme diagnosis.
(I can’t count how many CFS and FM patients have earnestly told me that they don’t have Lyme, or co-infections or immune problems yet have never been tested for any of those things…and, with their present doctors, probably never will be.) Additionally, other patients have told me that they don’t have osteoporosis, high cholesterol, or diabetes, but have never been tested for it by their doctors either, so this kind of thing isn‘t prevalent with just us.
The point? Get tested! Find out what else is wrong in your body so you can better fight the Lyme spirochete and what it's doing in and to your body. If your doctor is reluctant to test you, discuss it with him and if you don't like the answer, move on to one that will do what you're paying him to do.
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