North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[LONGDISTSHTR <longdistshtr@InfoAve.Net>]

Charles, Lyme Disease can be more easily diagnosed than previously. Trying to do it relying on signs and symptoms, as was our only tools in the days when it first appeared.

If you were my patient, I would suspect "tick fever" which is relatively harmless, but I would drawn a urine sample and have it tested by a lab which conducts the LDA procedure which is a Lyme Dot-Blot Assay for screening purposes.

If that were positive, then we would submit another urine sample for the confirmation test which is the RWB or Reverse Western Blot.

You don't want to guess or fool around with self-diagnosis.  Get a physician to check you out.  I have several patients who suffered for years because we didn't have a good diagnostic test. Now that we do it is a realitively simple matter to treat it early and avoid a bunch of foolishness. I don't like antibiotic treatments but they seems to be relatively safe and effective if Lyme D. is caught early.

Doc Lisenby