Deer ticks are active and cases of new Lyme disease are being reported here in the Northland.

Minnesota and Wisconsin are considered a hot bed for the disease.

We put you in touch with two Duluth Doctors who have first hand experience battling this illusive and baffling disease:

My husband and I go walking in the woods a lot and that's one of the reasons we live up here as many people do for the outdoor opportunities.

Dr. Peggy Naylor's Duluth home is surrounded by woodlands and she enjoys her encounters with wildlife in the city.

She never saw the deer tick that bit her or the "classic" bulls eye rash, depicted here.

When symptoms developed she thought it was the flu.

But a few months later a burning and tingling sensation began in her wrists and ankles muscle pain and fatigue followed.

I couldn't focus on more than a couple things a the same time anymore couldn't keep a short grocery list in my head had to keep writing it down - wow - mid forties this is tough!

Exposure to deer ticks and Lyme disease occurs primarily from May to July but black legged ticks commonly known as deer ticks are already active.

I've had a number of patients already come in this year bringing me a little 3 by 5 white card with the ticks they've picked off their pets or themselves and they were all deer ticks.

Some of the Northland's most complicated cases are treated by Infectious Disease Specialist, Doctor Kevin Stephan.

Every year I have been taking care of patients in this region I think I have seen more cases than the year before and that's a trend that is reflected through out the state.

Tick-borne disease risk in Minnesota is highest in forested areas within the shaded zones of this map.

The risk is also high in the western and north-central regions of Wisconsin.
Lacking the classic symptoms Lyme wasn't even on Dr. Naylor's radar. When her symptoms grew worse she began to fear the worse.

Do I have rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, putting off that visit to the doctor health care providers are the worst patients.

All of us, doctors, nurses, all of us.

And I was putting off finding out that I had something bad because I didn't want to know.

In the past 25 years we've learned a lot about Lyme and the tick borne bacteria that causes the disease but there's still a lot we don't know.

That's where the trickiness falls into the diagnosis is that if it a person comes in with a set of symptoms that may not be classic to what we learned in our textbooks or in school the diagnosis may be delayed or missed completely.
Unless someone thinks about a tick or the transmission of lyme the diagnosis may not be considered...and testing would not be done.

I started getting symptoms in October, November of 2006...and it didn't even occur to me until July of 2007 as I was pulling a regular wood tick out of my head like hummm, you know, joint pain, neuralgias, tick - hummmm.

Around the same time she had her "AH-HAH" moment Dr. Naylor talked with Dr. Stephan a colleague at the Duluth Clinic.

A test detected the Lyme disease bacteria in a sample of her blood and a course of oral and IV antibiotics was ordered.

First as the bacteria began to die I felt much worse they sorta release toxins ...all that's going thru your system. Then I started to gradually feel better and better...and now I'm pretty much back to where I was.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/Lyme/