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Diagnosed or Misdiagnosed….That Is The Question.

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Diagnosed or Misdiagnosed....That Is The Question.

Whenever I hear of someone being recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, Arthritis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Lupus or Alzheimer's disease I wonder if the diagnosis is correct. I have read and heard many misdiagnosis stories from Lyme disease patients and I wonder how many people are suffering needlessly, or have died, because they tested negative for Lyme disease and had symptoms indicative of another disease for which the tested positive. Did the physician use the generalized guidelines established by the Center of Disease Control as a diagnostic tool or did he have recent clinical diagnosis and testing information? Did he consider the possibility that the patient could have more than one condition? And did he consider the patient's lifestyle, leisure activities, areas they visited or where they live? Many questions that could change the diagnosis.

Lyme disease is referred to as "The Great Imitator" because it is just that. Not the "Pretty Good Imitator"...the GREAT imitator. That means textbook symptoms for one of the above diseases. And elements that read positive for those diseases can also be indicators of Lyme disease...even if the Lyme disease test results are negative, as mine were...six times.

Clinical diagnosis is used to diagnose many diseases. This is usually followed up with lab tests and results may be unspecific or borderline, so the physician may make a judgment call and opt to treat for something he specializes in. His intentions are good...he is not an evil person.

I am a medical advocate for a patient who has been in a steady mental decline for three years and was referred to a neurologist. I watched and listened as he did a clinical diagnosis that included asking several memory questions. He wrote "dementia" on the chart and ordered an MRI and a Lyme titer. The MRI and Lyme titer came back negative. He diagnosed the patient with dementia. I questioned the diagnosis because the patient is only 50 years old.

I then took the patient to a Lyme educated physician who ordered a more specific Lyme test and did a similar clinical diagnosis that included memory related questions...with one difference. He asked a question, then a few minutes later he re-asked the question and usually the patient had the answer. It took time for the infected brain to process the information and he knew that is often the case with encephalitic involvement with Lyme disease. The patient is also in a deep depression, which is common in as many as one-third of Lyme patients. The patient's symptoms include disorientation, confusion, dementia, acute hearing and fatigue. The patient lives in a tick endemic area...and she is a gardener. The test results were unquestionably positive and the clinical diagnosis supported them.

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