The Trouble With Lyme

Why can’t we hit the target with diagnosis and treatment?

- Marissa Evans

DEBBY SKOGMAN THOUGHT she’d found her dream house. It was in the Hudson Valley, near her favorite place to hike and steps from New York’s scenic Minnewaska State Park. But after moving there in 2010, the now 42-year-old early-childhood educator soon learned that her little piece of heaven was also a haven for ticks. Skogman was, as she always had been, careful about walking in the woods—using natural repellents, wearing high boots in thick underbrush, checking her body and clothing for ticks, and scanning her skin for the bulls-eye rash that is the telltale sign of Lyme. But that wasn’t enough: Ticks still managed to get inside her house, and a few times she even had to pull the little bloodsuckers off her skin. (“It’s so gross when they’re stuck to you!” she says.) Yet she never spotted a rash.

In late 2011, Skogman developed a persistent fever, chills, and body aches so intensely that she could barely crawl from her bedroom to the bathroom. She went to urgent care, then the ER, and followed up with a family physician. Her Lyme test came back negative. Three years later, she has bitten again, but this time: bulls-eye. On her stomach.

To her relief (an answer, finally!) and dismay (why did it take so long?), Skogman tested positive for Lyme—as well as Rocky Mountain spotted fever and anaplasmosis. Two months of oral antibiotics did nothing to ease her symptoms. She was referred to a Lyme specialist, who did additional tests, diagnosed her with at least one other tickborne disease, and eventually put her on IV antibiotics for an hour each day. After seven months of this new treatment, her blood sugar spiked, and the specialist took her off the medication. She wasn’t cured—she was only marginally better—but her treatment had run its course.