Hello Everyone! The great thing I like about Spear is there is a tremendous community of practitioners online or who follow it regularly. This posting is one that is "outside" of what many of us deal with every day, but I was hoping I may get some help since many of you may have dealt with or have someone you know that has dealt with Lyme disease.

For those that don't know, Lyme disease is a infectious disease that is transmitted by deer ticks and was thought to only affect around 30,000 people/year and but the CDC is now estimating that it may cause over 300,000 cases annually. If not diagnosed early enough, it becomes chronic in nature and can affect the nervous system as well as the heart and the body as a whole.

The reason I am posting this is a very personal one. Most of you don't know, but my wife has been impacted and diagnosed with Lyme disease. Early on we had a Lyme disease test, but it only came back with one marker positive and hence, per CDC guidelines, was a "negative" test. After years of suffering with fatigue, chronic pain and a multitude of other symptoms and seeing multiple specialists, including going to one of the top medical centers, no one could figure out the cause. So things continued on and for patients that have pain and issues but no diagnosis, the patient (my wife in this case), is sent to pain clinics to "manage" their pain. It was at the pain clinic they decided to do another Lyme test only to find now her test showed 3 out of 5 markers (now considered a CDC confirmed positive Lyme disease).

Being in NC, there are virtually no doctors that treat this disease. Long story short, we have been going to DC for the past 5 years to one of the top "Lyme literate" doctors with little to no progression in her overall symptoms and we are now searching for other options for treatment. Hence, the reason I am posting this with the hopes of getting some feedback from some of you. I know that this disease is very prevalent in the Northeast but also in some areas of the Midwest as well and it seems the more people I talk to, the more I hear how many people have been or know someone affected by it. Any information, contacts, doctors, etc. that you have and would be helpful and you are willing to share, is much appreciated! Thanks again for taking the time to read and/or respond! Jeff