Links:

Piedmont Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Home

We Help What Hurts Effective Treatment for Persistent Lyme Disease

Effective treatment for persistent Lyme disease is available but it requires a high index of suspicion, a long term view, and realistic expectations.

Lyme disease is a bacterial infection transmitted by a bite from the Borrelia Burgdorfer tick that can cause arthritis, musculoskeletal, heart and brain problems. Other reported symptoms which may come and go include fatigue, mood changes, psychiatric disorders, dizziness, shortness of breath, eye inflammation, heart rhythm problems. Since the incubation period is one to two weeks, because many patients do not recall having been bitten by a tick, and since many Lyme disease symptoms mimic those of other disorders, the diagnosis of can be difficult.

Many people know that with heart or cerebral vascular disease, you can have a heart attack or stroke, but they are not aware that PAD, too, can have a dramatic effect on quality of life. To get an idea of how disabling PAD can be, imagine if the arteries in your legs were having angina or if your foot were having a stroke.

The majority of people do not go from having no symptoms to severe vascular pain overnight. However, without an index of suspicion for PAD, most confuse the leg pain — and cramping caused by PAD — with something else. One common example is neurogenic claudication. In this case, leg pain is due to narrowing of the back’s spinal canal (called stenosis).