So although being told you have Lyme disease at seven in the evening on Christmas Eve is perhaps not the best news, I was expecting a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, so it was actually quite a relief. RA was the conclusion of the doctor after an initial examination, and had been mine too, after lots of internet time. The blood tests were carried out to confirm the diagnosis, and the test for Lyme was only done as an after-thought as I had had no other symptoms of the disease. Indeed, as we pay something for each test, the doc was quite happy for us to omit that one if the cost was too high.
Lyme disease was something we were aware of from our very first summer in France, a bacterial infection carried by ticks and most common in forested areas with large deer populations. Given that our views from the house are of wooded hillsides framing the mountains at the head of the valley, and deer are almost daily visitors in the garden, we are always vigilant. The cats get a daily check and we seemed to be removing ticks almost daily during the phenomenally cold and wet spring and early summer of this year.
We knew what signs to look for should we find that we too had been bitten by ticks, although neither of us were aware of having been bitten at all this year, mostly because it was too wet to want to venture outside! A bite is very often quickly followed by the classic bulls-eye rash. I don't think I would have missed one of these, and even my hair is short enough not to hide one, should I have been bitten on the head!
The next stage symptoms are described as fever or flu-like, sometimes with headaches; I didn't have anything like that either. Well, not enough to think it was anything worth mentioning. My joints have been achy, but have been for years. I put it down to getting older.
And then there are my knees. After four years of skiing hard all season, following on from twenty odd years of two or three weeks a year on the pistes, one skiing and one snowboarding accident, and consequently one knee arthroscopy, on top of knees where the knee cap misaligns or mistracks thanks to poor design and then being knocked off my bicycle in the centre of Oxford, it is not surprising that I ignore the grumbles from my knees. Although when the second one came up like a balloon six weeks after the first, and, rather more seriously, was agonizingly painful, perhaps I should have taken notice. Except my knees are normally troublesome, and no wonder the left one was complaining: the right one was out of action and consequently the left had to do all the work!
A month later an ankle and a shoulder came out in sympathy, and it was at that point I decided that this was probably more than just the stresses and strains of an increasingly unfit forty-six year-old body. Twenty years ago I'd had lumps and swellings on my hands and fingers, no explanation was ever found but I did test negative for rheumatoid arthritis, so it was hardly surprising that looking at the current crop of swollen and painful joints that I was setting off down that road again. And the doctor certainly agreed.
What a surprise when the Lyme test came back positive. Sadly, Lyme arthritis can be just as destructive as RA, but hopefully the course of antibiotics will halt the bacterial infection. Tomorrow I start a course of twice daily injections, not the most convenient, but I am apparently too light to have one jab a day and the tablet form may be more damaging to the kidneys. Oh joy. That will go on for a fortnight - getting up on New Years Day to drive up to the cabinet for the 9 am appointment will be fun - and then, after a forty-eight hour recovery period, I begin a course of steroids to combat the inflammation in the joints. Then after that, I'll find out how much, if any, damage has been done to joints. Fingers crossed.
I am not sure if we could have done any more, maybe gone to the doctor when the first knee swelled, but let this be a warning to anyone who lives or works in a Lyme area. Watch for those ticks and if in doubt get a blood test. My final thought is, thank goodness we live in a single story house; I can go upstairs but not down ...
Update - Having not responded to the treatment well enough, a referal and then a diagnosis of Non-classified Sero-negative Rheumatoid Arthritis followed.
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