Living With Long-Term Lyme is an Ordeal

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- Randy Sykes was a heavy equipment mechanic, a healthy, happy guy who suddenly started to feel lousy much of the time, starting around 1998.

"I just came down with a feeling like the flu, and with it, fatigue," said Sykes, now 55 and living in West Simsbury, Conn.

The symptoms would last three to six days, leaving him exhausted.

"Then, the symptoms would start to ease up. You'd get a little bit of energy," he recalled. "You'd feel like you were on the road to recovery, and then, you'd crash again."

This went on for two and a half years, with Sykes becoming increasingly desperate. He saw five doctors in Connecticut and underwent every test imaginable at a clinic in Massachusetts. But no one could figure out what was wrong.

By then, Sykes was declining, mentally and physically. "I was having trouble adding numbers. And I had a knee with so much fluid in it, I could hardly walk. And they had no idea what was wrong," he said.

With no hope in sight, Sykes began to prepare for the worst. "I just accepted the fact I was dying, because no one knew what was wrong with me," he said.

A few weeks later, a friend put him in touch with a person suffering from Lyme disease. "Talking with him on the phone, he said he'd bet two months' salary I had Lyme disease," Sykes remembered.

The man gave Sykes the name of a doctor, and after a consultation, the physician diagnosed Sykes with late-stage neurological Lyme disease.

Sykes started taking antibiotics and actually felt worse, at first. The doctor told him this was due to the death of the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, spirochetes known as Borrelia burgdorferi.

"They start releasing toxins," Sykes said. "They're decomposing in your body."

Sykes has been on antibiotics for six years now. He hasn't suffered any side effects, he said, and has gained some relief from the medicine. He figures he got Lyme disease from a tick bite that he shrugged off at the time.

He quit his job three years ago, afraid that his fatigue would cause him to hurt someone. He's currently on long-term disability.

As for his prospects, Sykes isn't optimistic. "I don't think there's any hope for me," he said. "There's too much damage."

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