By Susan Shinn

For The Salisbury Post

While one young mom is being treated for some of the co-infections of Lyme disease, she’s not completely convinced that’s the illness she had.

Her ordeal started in October 2013. She had terrible headaches, but she’d just quit nursing her baby. And she’d recently had a tick bite, but didn’t think anything about it.

The woman, who didn’t want her name used, showed the bite — which was on the back of her leg — to her mom.

“She said, ‘Oh my God, you’ve got this huge bulls-eye rash,’ ” she says.

Several weeks later, after a bout of dizziness, the young woman went to the doctor. She also had some numbness and tingling in her hands, which by itself wasn’t terribly severe.

Her doctor recommended that she be tested for multiple sclerosis.

“At that point,” says the 29-year-old, “I kinda got freaked out.”

Her MRI was clean, but her symptoms continued to worsen. She was experiencing “severe, horrible joint pain,” which led her to believe it may be arthritis.

Finally, she asked to be tested for Lyme disease.

“My initial test came back positive,” she says, although further tests came back negative.

No medicines were working for the patient, so her doctor sent her to a physician who had treated her doctor’s father for Lyme disease.

The specialist felt something was going on, and further blood work revealed four to five co-infections related to Lyme disease. The specialist decided to treat those co-infections.

Following several courses of antibiotics, combined with nutritional supplements and dietary changes, this young woman says she’s much better.

And she has advice for patients who may contract Lyme disease — or related illnesses.

“If you ever get a bite, make sure you go get it checked out,” she says. “If you catch it early, you can get a lot better handle on it.”

Freelance writer Susan Shinn lives in Salisbury.