Lyme is weird. Spirochetes are crafty. Lyme disease symptoms can look different in everyone, because infection can occur in any system of the body. Some people never see a tick, yet they develop symptoms, go to the doctor and get antibiotics. Others can't persuade their doctors to even test for Lyme -- even if they caught the nasty little tick in the act, and display the classic symptom of a bull's eye rash. A significant number of people don't read their own symptoms right (like I said, Lyme is weird. Who can blame them for not suspecting it?) Therefore, they may not discover they've got Lyme (if they're 'lucky' enough to test positively for it) until the disease has reached the late stage. By then, according to some Lyme literate docs, the bug is very tough to catch, and v-e-r-y resistant to being killed.

What if, even after you test positively, and your doc is ready to treat you, you're turned down by your insurance company? And anyway, let's not pretend that only people with health insurance get Lyme disease. What do you do when you're sick and you're not insured? It's no secret that antibiotics are prohibitively expensive. Some herbal treatments that appear to be quite effective are less so, but if you aren't able to afford to see a Lyme literate doc in the first place, where does that leave you?

That leaves you right where untold numbers of struggling sick people find themselves: On your own. Left to your own devices. And here's the rub: Lyme brain! Anybody with this disease understands what a cruel joke the universe seems to have played. At the very moment you need your mind the most, your critical thinking faculties are all fogged up. What's a Lymie to do? Find smart people who've been down this path and ask a bazillion questions. Here's a shameless plug for our 'Interviews with Experts' series. Tune in and listen up. We've all got a lot to learn.

Tags: spirochete, tick, symptoms, uninsured, mentalfog