Originally Posted by MAXUM
This may be long winded but figured I'd share.
Last year I had the scare of a lifetime. I was at my camp on vacation and started to feel rather lethargic, had zero energy. I figured eh it's probably the stupidly long and insane hours I work that had finally caught up with me. Well this persisted for a couple of days. Then it went from that to flu like symptoms. Go from having the chills to sweating like a pig. That lasted about 24 hours then all was fine. I was still a little worn down but didn't think to much about it.
A week later I determined that I still wasn't right... something was definitely wrong. I developed abdominal pain unlike anything I had ever felt before. Hmm.. so I grinned dealt with it until one night it was keeping me awake and I said good grief maybe I need to get checked out. It was so bad in fact I decided to go to the ER. Well as it turns out I had a plumbing problem.. as it it wasn't working so I was given some rotor router stuff and sent home. 24 hours later, nope no change... back to the ER. They decided I needed to get a more serious treatment. Well um hmm... I must say by then I was really messed up and in significant pain. Well next thing I know I start feeling all woozy start seeing the milky way and bam I'm out cold. I come to however much time later to being on laid out a bunch of people running around and I hear somebody yelling some stuff, then "got to hit him again" ... clear... BAM - (yes I was fully conscience by then) um what the hell is going on here.
Doc says to me hey you with us? I look up at him and say yeah what the heck just happened? He says you just had a heart attack. Say what? I'm a very fit and healthy young guy, active, eat well, the whole nine yards, how the heck can I have a heart attack? I get moved into ICU and put on observation. Over the course of the next week I have a bazillion tests done to me. Docs can't find a thing wrong with me and are bewildered by why this could happen when my heart is perfectly fine. My case is referred to some specialists in Boston, they look my case over and can't find a thing wrong either.
Well while I'm there, I am also tested for Lyme. I pop positive. I'm immediately put on antibiotics to treat it. Lucky for me they determine that it's a fresh case so they were able to eradicate it.
I had very lengthy conversations with my doc about why this happen and if it's possible that Lyme caused it. In his opinion he says that my symptoms did not match others who have had heart related problems tied directly to Lyme, yet, they never and still to this day have no explanation as to why this occurred. I did have an ICD implant done just to be safe, yet in all the time post this happening there have been no anomalies observed...which by the way is not usually the case - so what to make of it, beats me.
Now on to Lyme. I had very lengthy discussions about it with the infectious disease doc that was treating me at the time. She tells me there is a chance that my heart attack could have been caused by Lyme, but there is so little information out there it's hard to say. She did say that it effects people in different ways and thus far due to lack of case studies they simply have little to go off of. As more research is done they are finding that it is a far more complex disease than they first thought it was. In fact... and this is an important thing to note... the reason why that vaccination is not available is because it only treated a certain type of bacteria but science has shown that there are different and more numerous strains so in a sense it is ineffective and therefore no longer produced. This also can be said for the treatments for pets. More science is needed to study this, but progress is slow mostly because there is little money to be made yet in treating this. In fact in most cases simple antibiotic treatments will get rid of it, but not always. Some people have had it far to long and have to live with the lingering effects the rest of their life. Sometimes, but not always treatments can be done to keep it under control. It can attack your joints, nervous system, heart, etc.. and in rare cases be fatal.
The sad thing is many are misdiagnosed, the symptoms are often times misread or are easily explained away as something far less sinister, in fact it can stop showing signs of infection for a period of time then come back. Even the tests to diagnose it can be inaccurate. It really is pretty scary if you think about it.
Thankfully for me, I'm fine but now have a little life insurance just in case. I'm sure as time goes on more will be done to study this disease and it's effects but for now there isn't much out there. Although this has happened it's certainly not going to scare me out of the woods, or get all freaked out if I find another tick on me, but be aware that if you do get one inbedded and start to feel a little funny it may be worth getting tested for it. While it may or may not catch it, it's a good idea to go back regularly to check especially if you spend a lot of time outdoors where you could be exposed.
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