Share with us your story of how you think you got Lyme.

I think I got it last June 29th 2015 when I went to Tennessee with my wife, and we took a little walk in a trail to the Burgess Fall. I'm sure about it actually! I don't camp, or go in the woods because I don't like bugs I'm more a city beach guy as a matter of fact I told my wife that i didn't want to go on that trip but to please my wife i did go. So I know for sure that the 30 minutes walk in Tennessee was my "D" day. I got sick December 8th 2015 and got my diagnoses on May 19th 2016

Post Edited (robby vieira) : 6/10/2016 9:13:18 PM (GMT-6)

I just have no way of knowing. I have a Calif. strain so it could have been when I was 6-8 years old. I did have a lot of symptoms as a young person. That was 58 years ago.

I had many ticks before I was 30 because we lived in the country where there were woods and corn fields all around.

I also had a bullseye type rash 10 years ago. I thought it was ringworm so I didn't check it out.

I also could have gotten it 5 years ago with a blood transfusion. Thats when the bad symptoms really started. I had a couple of emergency surgeries at that time too so it could have been the stress from that bringing out an old infection.

It will be interesting to hear how everyone else got it. I really think there is no way of hiding from the little buggers. Its kind of the luck of the draw.

Huge camper all my life. Slept on sleeping bag on the ground. Fly fisherwoman and lake fishergal. Played competition softball way into my 30's. Always outdoors! I have lived in forested areas since I was 10. Super healthy all my life. April 29th, 2015 I went to a luncheon on a patio by a swimming pool. I collected the tablecloths after the event. Later I saw a bite mark on my forearm right where I had bundled up those tablecloths. I think the little dog or cat that was running around brought the tick to the tablecloth. My symptoms started up June 20. That is 7 weeks later. about June 13th I started allergy symptoms to the pollen that was all around. I think pollen allergies lowered my resistance and lyme went crazy.

What a great day for us....lol

Mrseaglea said...
Wow - what a coincidence. I believe I got bitten by a nymph tick on June 29, 2015 on Cape Cod. I was visiting friends at a house on a pond in a very woodsy area. It was a large house that her whole family rented for the week so the driveway was full of cars. In order to get into your car - you brushed up again bushes & shrubs. A round, red rash came out on my chest two weeks later on July 13 but it wasn't a bullseye. If it had been a bullseye - I would have known what to do. I didn't get sick or have a fever or anything at that point. Symptoms didn't start happening until late August & they were so random, I didn't put it together with the rash until early November.

My own neighborhood might not be totally innocent in all this - I live down the street from a state park where you can see deer every night & I know many people who have had ticks on them upon leaving the park. My preferences is to believe it happened down the Cape where I probably will never go again instead of my own backyard!!

Either sexually transmitted from my spouse who was bitten by a CA tick over 30 years ago and had a classic bulls eye rash (he has wonky health but refuses to consider he might have lyme.)
Or - galavanting in 2012 in the wilds of Slovenia (they have more lyme here than any other european country from what I've learned)
Or - in 2013 at an artist residency 30 miles from lyme, CT
Or - in 2014 at an artist residency 30 miles from lyme, CT
My intuitive guess is that I probably got it via my spouse, and when my immune system became greatly compromised from the period of time when I was making a major push with my art adventures and not having a vacation for 7 years, working 7 days a week, often times, 16 hour days, and eating horribly... the body got way out of balance.

Live in Indiana was out clearing brush from the lot we just bought went home that night I woke up with a tick on my head pulled it off never thought anything about it went right back to sleep. I'm always out side my dogs used to run the ditch and we would pull dozens off them.

While I showed symptoms starting at a young age, I know for sure I was bitten on an island in ME in May 2008. I was on an island picking up camping equipment for a camp I work for and we knew it was crawling with Lyme and TBI so we stayed on the beaten path and checked ourselves. about five weeks later flu-like symptoms and night sweats. Took the camp nurse three weeks to think of having me tested for Lyme. Was positive then and given 10 days doxy. Took care of all the immediate physical stuff. Has been a nightmare ever since.

I ran an animal shelter starting in 1994 and around '98 or so I started having migraines for the first time in my life and various food and airborne allergies - also new to me and started gaining weight for no reason - I had always had a decent figure before that and never had to worry about my weight. We have a lot of "tick fever" in dogs here in Arizona and I was constantly handling dogs with the disease. I would have days that I was totally wiped out, exhausted and couldn't get out of bed. Back then I also camped or hiked every weekend, so may have been exposed then, too. I don't know. I never, ever remember having a tick attach to me although I picked a whole lot of them off dogs. I also owned two dogs that were tick fever positive and both of them had it chronically and were on and off doxy their whole lives, whenever their symptoms would reappear. I believe somehow I was exposed to Lyme in that period but couldn't tell you how or when.

In October 2014 I was sitting at work and something bit me on my thigh twice in rapid succession. It was some kind of spider and my legs became black and blue where the bites were and I started feeling like I had loose hairs on my arms, shoulders and neck within 10 or so days. My symptoms increased and within three months I was down. I know that spider gave me Bartonella.

I don't know how something so tiny can cause such harm. In reading everyone's stories, I just makes me so upset that Lyme isn't something that is taken more seriously. None of my doctors ever considered it when I would go in with chronic sinus infections, balance issues, muscle weakness or fatigue or any of the other million complaints that I've had over the years.

I wish you all healing and strength in your journeys. We're the wayfinders for the next generation of Lymie's that will be spreading quickly. Let's make their paths easier to walk through our struggles and victories.

Jenny

These stories you're sharing are heart touching.

What a terrible shame on the medical community that this has been ignored, swept under the carpet for so many years....decades really. There ought to be a giant data base that everyone's experiences could go into, the similarities should be so obvious.

Even though I grew up and played in a wooded area in Michigan, and spent many years fishing, camping on the ground, picking berries, etc., in Missouri later on, I don't believe any of the ticks I ran into were infected. I had a bf when I was 20 that would come unglued if a tick got on him. I thought he was being silly.
When I moved to rural Missouri I ended up living in a small house on my Mom's 40 acres of woods. Our homes were almost in the center of it. I clearly remember, sometime around 1983 or '84 being swarmed with hundreds of hatchlings each time I went out to use her riding lawn mower. I hand cleared a large wedge of her property and erected fencing that I removed from the adjoining neighbors' field. I was also chopping my own firewood. I was always in ticks.
I got a rash on my back, at my waistline, and started having painful breathing episodes. I went to the small town's family Dr.and he claimed I had shingles and Pleurisy. At the same time. I'm sure he put me on antibiotics, for the usual 2 week dose. He also told me to use a humidifier, but he didn't tell me to put bleach in the water, and I'm not even sure I changed it every day. A couple of months later I awoke with a seering pain in my chest, and thinking I was having a heart attack, I went to the E.R. They told me the cartilage was deteriorating in my chest. I thought they were nuts. Because of those chest pains that have plagued me now for 30 years I taught myself to breath very shallowly, to avoid the muscle spasms that would start the pain. Just a week ago I ran across the disorder. It has a name - "costochondritis" Inflammation causes it. I had the chest pains frequently, as well as vibrations so bad I thought we were having earth quakes. I had panic attacks.
The family Dr. had me on Prednisone, time release nitroglycerine, shots of sedatives, amitriptylene, anti inflamatories. I began having seizures from the combo. After a year of it and wanting to know what was going on, one of the State University Hospital clinics diagnosed Fibro. Around '91 we moved but except for the first house we moved to for one year, the other two homes in the last 24 years have been in the woods with lots of ticks. I've been sick with fevers every time I had a major run in with ticks. It was 92 I got tested fir Lyme. Nothing was done, the positive results were called "false positives".

I can date every major relapse to some stressful event, physical and/or emotional. The worst was on the heels of upper arm reconstruction surgery 2 years ago this last month. I cannot even begin to list all the issues I've had with my body since the first infection in 83-84, but I see them mentioned in just about every case story I read. And every time I see someone say the exact same thing I tried to explain about what I was going through, I would cry because of the validation. Fibromyalgia as everyone knows, was once treated just like Lyme is now. Mostly all in our heads.

Yes, I believe I have read that is so. Let me double check. It' was in an article shared by my European friend, and it was at least a week ago, more like 2. I can't find it yet. What made me pay attention was me wondering about the similarities between the rash I had 30 years ago, and pictures of non blistering "shingles" rashes. When I got the RMSF diagnosis last year, I did not have a rash. I don't recall a bad rash since not long after moving to this property. The aforementioned Dr.could not identify it. I had to wear a sheet it hurt to have clothing touch it.

I want to clarify I don't mean that there is a direct correlation between lyme and shingles, if the rash was correctly identified as the shingles virus rash with postules. I believe some rashes may have been mis-identified by some Drs. as Shingles.

Post Edited (julymorning) : 6/9/2016 11:45:23 PM (GMT-6)

jennysetter said...
I ran an animal shelter starting in 1994 and around '98 or so I started having migraines for the first time in my life and various food and airborne allergies - also new to me and started gaining weight for no reason - I had always had a decent figure before that and never had to worry about my weight. We have a lot of "tick fever" in dogs here in Arizona and I was constantly handling dogs with the disease. I would have days that I was totally wiped out, exhausted and couldn't get out of bed. Back then I also camped or hiked every weekend, so may have been exposed then, too. I don't know. I never, ever remember having a tick attach to me although I picked a whole lot of them off dogs. I also owned two dogs that were tick fever positive and both of them had it chronically and were on and off doxy their whole lives, whenever their symptoms would reappear. I believe somehow I was exposed to Lyme in that period but couldn't tell you how or when.

In October 2014 I was sitting at work and something bit me on my thigh twice in rapid succession. It was some kind of spider and my legs became black and blue where the bites were and I started feeling like I had loose hairs on my arms, shoulders and neck within 10 or so days. My symptoms increased and within three months I was down. I know that spider gave me Bartonella.

I don't know how something so tiny can cause such harm. In reading everyone's stories, I just makes me so upset that Lyme isn't something that is taken more seriously. None of my doctors ever considered it when I would go in with chronic sinus infections, balance issues, muscle weakness or fatigue or any of the other million complaints that I've had over the years.

I wish you all healing and strength in your journeys. We're the wayfinders for the next generation of Lymie's that will be spreading quickly. Let's make their paths easier to walk through our struggles and victories.

Jenny

Jennysetter...I know I was also bit by a spider or mosquito...this disturbs me more than getting it from ticks...we've had 4 tick bites in 2 months in our family...but think of the many bug bites we get over the summer ☹️

It is believed that mine was sexually transmitted from my spouse. He was bitten over 35 years ago. The tick was pulled off of him after being there for hours and he was never treated. I have never been an outdoorsy person so getting bitten really was never a thought. Mosquitoes are an option, but we're thinking hubby.

My oval non-itching bullseye rash was sometime between 88-91. The Dr did NOTHING. No tests at all. I mentioned lyme, because of my vast time in the woods.

What was this Dr thinking? I spent most weekends in the woods of north Wisconsin, which is known lyme country now. I need a time machine.

So many similar stories.