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Comment by pwenzel | Hacker News Reader

I live in Minnesota and am being treated for Lyme disease for the second time in 15 months. It's no joke. The first time I got Lyme, it came with a painful shingles co-infection on top of the usual symptoms.

Now the second time, I am again worried about getting sick with something else while in an immunocompromised state. The fatigue, fever, and back pain that came along this second time was worse than the first. I needed a nap after walking up the stairs.

So, I am curious how bad and prolonged the side effects were in these 59 adverse events. If only temporary, I'd consider it worth it over getting the actual disease.

The article also asks, "Why vaccinate against something that can be cured with antibiotics?" Undiagnosed Lyme becomes harder to treat the longer you wait, and the dose of antibiotics longer and more intense.

(PS: I am so very thankful for doxycycline.)

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I had Lyme twice as a kid too (in suburban Pennsylvania). It's not fun and it's a bit crazy that you can get it more than once. People are usually shocked when I tell them. I knew someone who was temporarily paralyzed on one side because of Lyme that they diagnosed late - it's scary.

I grew up in CT. Had it 4 times, only got the bullseye once. It is no joke, and as you get older it seems to suck more and more. Last time I had numbness in my face as the only symptom, but...thrice bitten, fully paranoid, and I was treated pretty fast.

One thing which is important with a vaccine is that when I was a kid (early 90s) the rate of ticks carrying lyme was in the 10% range or less, while now it is >50%. A vaccine is critical.

I didn't have the bullseye the second time either I was just extremely tired and had a mild fever. That's how it often goes, and if my mom hadn't recognized the nonspecific symptoms it could have been a lot worse.

How do you manage to get it so often? I live in an area that is endemic to Lyme, but it's something that can easily be avoided (much easier than Covid). But I do see reckless behaviour all the time as well, so maybe it is not that surprising.

3 of the times I was under 15. I liked to play in the woods and did yard work. I used deet, etc, but I guess was just unlucky. The last time I was 22, had just moved back to CT from college and got a tick while mountain biking. I noticed it when I checked, but I guess it had been on long enough.

As someone with a dog, I can say it is not easy to avoid ticks. Even with canine medication they pick one or two up every time we go for a hike, ON the trail.

If you consider enjoying nature as "reckless behavior" then the shared understanding needed as a basis for a conversation may be missing. Lying in the grass looking at sky and stars, running through the forest with your dog, go pick mushrooms. That's very natural behaviour, not "reckless". Of course you can sit indoors all day, but I prefer a vaccine and enjoy nature instead.

I live in Sweden, I know several people who got Borrelia infections including my girlfriend, and hers developed into Lyme once. Most caught it and treated it early but some just had a fever and only discovered it was Lyme after months.

It's insidious, if you spend time in nature you are exposing yourself to it. The ticks will be on tall grass, falling from trees, crawling from the ground. How can that be avoided?

During summer we have to check ourselves for ticks every single night, my girlfriend lives in a house inside a wooded area, I have a big garden on my house where deers are commonly spotted (this past month I've been visited by one every single day).

No, it's not easy to be avoided if you leave the house, just laying on my lawn or garden grass is enough to get me paranoid about it. My housemates have already found 3 ticks stuck to them.

Please, if you know an easy way to avoid all of this I'd love to hear it but so far I only know to be cautious and vigilant.

>Please, if you know an easy way to avoid all of this I'd love to hear it but so far I only know to be cautious and vigilant.

I'm late to this so don't know if you'll see it, but I live in rural New England and ticks have become ever more horrendous here, yet I haven't had a single one in, a decade at least? The big thing for me has been getting a solid set of permethrin utilizing full coverage clothing (look for branding like "Insect Shield"), including socks and a hat with neck protection, combined with occasional judicious usage of repellent (I suggest 20% picaridin instead of DEET, something like Sawyer Products which has almost no smell and won't melt polymers that deet will). Having clothing that one can just put on for going out and boom high protection makes it so convenient vs applying repellent that I never fail to, and it has done exactly what was promised. They don't last forever, after 50-70 washings they need to be replaced, but if using them in a focused way for outdoor usage that can last a good while.

I'd still absolutely leap at a vaccine if available, but physical/chemical protection does work so the trick is making it convenient enough and enough of a habit to be 100% consistent about it.

something that can easily be avoided

How? Just working in my garden for an hour or two and I have a a good 1 in 4 chance of getting a tick bite.

How long were the ticks on you before you removed them?

Have you considered hyperbaric oxygen treatment?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24726678/

I have not. Looks interesting. To be clear, I do not have chronic lyme, but rather have been bit by a tick twice in the last year and a half and got lyme disease each time.

You should play powerball with that type of luck!!! I pick embedded ticks off my body 6 out of 7 days each week, for about 3-4 months each year for many years, and have yet to face consequences...but then, I don't go to get medical attention often, so, who knows, maybe I've had it?

How was it diagnosed?

Shingles is caused by varicella (chickenpox) virus that's already latent in your nerves. Really unlikely that it was a "co-infection", it just reactivated because your body was busy fighting Lyme.

I'm not sure what you think "co-infection" means, but you just described precisely that. The reactivation of shingles meant that he was simultaneously infected with two different agents. "Co-infection" (for me at least) implies nothing about how or where the secondary infection came from.

That's fair. It's a really commonly implied thing among the quackier side of Lyme treatment that every tick is going to unload a clown car full of pathogens (used to justify even more unvalidated tests). But, by the definition, it's just co-occurring infections regardless of vector.

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