Lyme Disease: The Great Imitator

Spring is my favorite season. Warmer weather, budding flowers and lots of greenery in yards, gardens and parks encourages outside activities and fills me with energy. The spring season also brings out lots of crawling and flying critters like bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, as well as some of the more unpleasant pests like ticks and mosquitos. If you enjoy spending time outside like I do, hiking, gardening or walking the dog, be aware that ticks and their bites can be not only annoying, but dangerous. Jana’s Experience Jana Braden found out how dangerous tick bites can be the hard way. She enjoyed the outdoors and never gave much thought to something as minor as ticks. Jana never even realized that she had been bitten by a tick, so when her eyes began to hurt, became red and extremely inflamed her doctor thought that it was conjunctivitis. She had suffered with eye infections before, but this was different, and much worse. Without any other cause that she or her doctor could pinpoint, he treated her for conjunctivitis. After months of treatments for an eye infection, the pain continued, and in fact, worsened. She tried to tell the doctor that she had had eye infections before and something was very wrong. He wouldn’t listen. Any light, from bright sunlight to the tiny, red light on her smoke detector caused excruciating pain. “It felt like an ice pick in my eye,” Jana recalled. She went to the emergency room, where the doctor on duty also told her...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Chronic Conditions Source Type: blogs