If you have Lyme Disease - or know anyone who does - please be sure to look for Chronic Tonic this evening when Stranded Wind tells us of his medical misadventures.
Chronic Tonic posts Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. EST
This short diary serves two purposes:
First, it's an announcement about Chronic Tonic this evening (see above).
Second, a small group of us were thinking of proposing a Netroots Nation panel on the politico-health controversies surrounding Lyme disease, and we wanted a sense of how many people have a vested interest in the topic, especially those who will be attending Netroots Nation and would be incined to participate.
Please take the poll below, and if you have strong feelings, g'head and post 'em HERE in comments. (Yikes, did I REALLY just ask for that?!)
FYI: Chronic Tonic is published as a support group for people living with chronic conditions, so if this topic brings up adversarial feelings, please post them here and respect the sanctity of Chronic Tonic to be a safe space for those who are contending with difficult circumstances.
Thank you.
The CDC list of symptoms of Lyme can be found here
In my limited experience, being tested for Lyme has two components, first an ELISA test which has a high rate of inconclussive and false negative results. After positive or inconclusive ELISA results, a second test, the Western Blot, is done to confirm. Very often, doctors prescribe a course of antibiotics to attempt to 'challenge' the Lyme spirochetes in order to make the body react to it so that it can show up in testing. You can read about it here (in the case of a known recent bite, doctors may give antibiotics right away to fight off presumed infection).