Matthew Goss's Lyme Disease Information

Introduction

How I got it

Types of Ticks that Carry Disease

Definitions and Terminology

Symptoms and Tests

Drugs

Herxheimer Reactions

Vitamins, Nutritional Supplements, and Herbs

Bacteria and Yeast

Diet

Costs of Treatment

Is There a Cure?

Is it Sexually Transmitted?

Links

Printable Flyer

I didn't hear a whole lot about Lyme Disease before I left for my hike. But I learned a little bit about it, and went fully armed with 10 days worth of tetracycline antibiotics, which I carried for nearly a thousand miles before I went home in good health. They were one of the few non-negotiable items in my pack.

I never used them...on the trail.

About 3 weeks after I got off the trail, I was back in Pennsylvania working on finding a job, relocating, living out of a suitcase, a million "other" things to do. I got a really bad sinus infection that turned into a fever, complete with chills, sweating, mild hallucinations and swollen glands. After my third straight day in bed I pulled the antibiotics out of the first aid kit in my pack and started taking them. A week later I was back to normal. Still had lots of "other" things to worry about. It went away, and since I was unemployed and didn't have health insurance, I didn't go to a doctor.

Fast forward 4 weeks...

I had just relocated to Nashville, started a new job, and was still trying to unpack and furnish my apartment. Still lots of "other" things to do to transition back to the "real" world.

I got a really sore throat that seemed to last forever, and got more and more painful as the days went by. I eventually lost my voice. My glands swelled up again. I started back on what I had left of the antibiotics, and the illness turned into a chest cold with a bad cough and then went away after about 2 weeks.

Two weeks later I was back where I started. Each time I got sick it seemed to get worse. And each time more and more symptoms showed up. I got a urinary tract infection that went away for a week and then came back for a week, back and forth, no getting rid of it, despite massive doses of antibiotics. I slept 10 to 12 hours a day. After taking enough antibiotics to kill a small mammal steady and hard for 3 weeks, I was still sick and tired.

Within a couple of weeks, I began experiencing what people with Lyme call "brain fog," which is a collection of symptoms that involve difficulty concentrating, short term memory problems, focusing, etc. At the same time I also began having trouble focusing my vision. It became a real effort to keep my eyes focused on what I was reading. You know how you feel when you haven't had any sleep for a couple of days and you just can't get your eyes to focus anymore? I started feeling like that for a couple of days at a time, even though I'd been sleeping 12 hours a day.

I also started experiencing muscle twitching all over my body, and some muscular aches and joint pains. My legs would feel like Jello®.

Next came the hearing sensitivity. I work on the phone all day, and I started having to turn the volume on my phone way down because background noises and high pitched voices really started to grate on my nerves.

And I noticed trouble thinking clearly, and became frustrated easily. I used to enjoy reading very much, and spent most of my free time doing that (at least 2 hours every day). But I found myself constantly having to re-read things and eventually gave up on it. Short term memory became a problem, and I would "zone out" easily. I forgot things as soon as I was told them, and had to ask people to repeat things often.

I started having trouble with simple math problems. Like a math computation which requires two or three steps of simple arithmetic, such as adding a couple of numbers and them multiplying that by another number, and then dividing by something else. I'd get to the second or third step and forget what I was trying to figure out, or what the next step was, and I'd have to start over. Usually by the third try I would actually get it.

Want to know what its like to have a Lyme brain? Check out the Forum Discussions on Lymenet.org for personal accounts by members.