It's December 8, 2007 and I'm beginning my second month of antibiotic treatments. I think that I developed the disease in late May or early June but, because a bulls-eye rash never showed up, I can only guess at when it really hit me.
Additionally, because I've 'normally' got arthritis and I've had aches and pains for 20 years anyway, I took the gradual increase in pain as simply a part of having arthritis.
My symptoms sort of snuck up on me: I found that, because my shoulders were so stiff, I couldn't reach my back in order to wash it while I was in the shower. I chalked it up to the fact that I'd dislocated one of my shoulders in an accident in my early 2o's and never had it looked at by a doctor. (It still 'dislocates' spontaneously from time-to-time and makes me wince a bit.)
I used to get into my car by first putting my legs in and then simply sitting down. Early this summer my hips began to bother me and I had to sit in the car first with my feet on the ground and then 'rotate' them into the car. Again, I thought that it was simply my arthritis and other old injuries coming back to haunt me.
My wife and I took a trip to Nova Scotia this September trailing my BMW motorcycle behind the van. While there I continued to feel sort of 'punk' in general. The 'arthritis' was really giving me a problem. To add insult to injury, I was beginning to have some difficulty getting my leg over the seat of the motorcycle. I concluded that this was caused because I'd left my Naprocyn at home and I had no pain relievers to take. (Naprocy, by the way, is not an over-the-counter drug in Canada.)
When we got back to Connecticut the next week I began to have problems sleeping because of the pain, even with having resumed taking the Naprocyn. I was now taking 8 tablets per day with very little effect. Soon after we got home, I began having night sweats.
The final straw came on a beautiful late September Sunday when I took a long motorcycle ride through the Catskills. I stopped for gas and found that not only was getting off of the bike difficult, getting back on it was nearly impossible. I had to go to the doctor.
I got in to see our wonderful nurse practitioner the following Friday. She found that my blood pressure was sky high (she took me off of the Naprocyn). She also drew a couple of vials of blood and sent them off to the lab.
The following Friday I went back for a follow-up. The test showed that I had a thriving case of Lyme. She prescribed a months course of Doxicycline. "When you start taking the medication", she said, "your body is going to become a battleground between the medicine and the disease." I didn't really think too much about what she said but I would think about it again in a few days.
I got the prescription filled and drove home. 'Two tablets per day' the dosage stated. I figured that I'd take two at once and get the ball rolling. For the next two days I viewed death as being preferable to the pain that I was in. She was right, my body had become a battleground. What had happened was the Jarich-Herxheimer reaction.
