[someoneiam]

My Lyme story is probably one of the less dramatic posted here, but it is telling that I feel like I was relatively taken good care of compared to many others here and elsewhere. My first symptom was the classic erythema migrans (bullseye rash), which was painful on its own, but given that this was during summertime in southern Italy it got unbearable at times. I saw a doctor who told me I had probably been bitten by a spider or lizard, but nothing to worry about. I asked him about Lyme but he insisted there were no ticks in Italy (!)... Eventually I got low fever and terrible upper joint pains, as well as deformed nails and fingers (the second stage of Lyme). This was still not enough for the doc as again, there are no ticks in Italy... After a short time Bell's palsy kicked in (severe facial paralysis and a drastic change in taste in my case) and then I knew that I was 100% dealing with Lyme. So off we go to Italy's main institution for infectious diseases where they tap me for an insane amount of blood to analize, and tell me I will stay at the hospital for maybe a week. Tests came back and Lyme was positive, even though there are no ticks in Italy... I ended up staying at the hospital almost two months with antibiotics pumped intravenously multiple times a day for hours. After recovering I had to go to the hospital for health controls every 2-3 months or so for a around a year.

And I was lucky enough to go through this during a time where antibiotics are still effective at fighting bacterias. One of my biggest fears is entering a post-antibiotic era, where bacterias grow resistant at a faster rate than we are discovering new antibiotics. If we keep misusing them, to erroneously treat ourselves, to feed livestock, pumping the rest products into rivers, this might not be such a far fetched scenario.