I had a very similar story that I’ve shared on here before. I fortunately very much knew it was Lyme because I got it in Europe where the bullseye rash is much more common. My PCP, in his infinite wisdom, said it was a skin rash and wanted to refer me to a dermatologist instead. Why? Because he couldn’t be bothered to Wikipedia Lyme disease and learn that the European one takes 8 weeks to appear, and because the gestation time didn’t line up with his knowledge of American Lyme disease, well, surely it’s not Lyme disease, even though it was an extremely obvious bullseye rash right where I had gotten the bite. It didn’t matter to him that I told him that I had gotten it in Europe AND that I had looked it up and noted that the European variant takes longer.
I live in Texas and I was lucky/smart enough to tell my PCP to piss off and walk into an urgent care where a nurse who was born in Maryland immediately diagnosed me and gave me antibiotics. If you get a tick bite do not ignore this. It will fuck up your life if you do. It’s insane your doctor didn’t just proactively prescribe antibiotics. The long term effects of Lyme disease are bad enough that it is absolutely something that is worth giving antibiotics for even if you aren’t 100% sure.
The incident has made me have a pretty strong skepticism of whatever doctors say. I now know that you, and only you, are responsible for your own medical care unfortunately. It is insufficient to trust someone simply because they have the letters MD after their name
I suddenly had alopecia areata. If you don't want to Google it, there were coin-sized areas of my head spontaneously losing hair, starting with my beard.
My GP said "this is not a health problem, if you want a fuller beard use rogain". I was embarrassed enough to go home and try to tough it out.
Within 6 months the whole left side of my head was completely bare, except for splotchy outlines here and there. My right side had hair but it was spreading fast. I looked like a hyena. It was not a great experience.
Went to a dermatologist, got steroid shots, and my hair grew back in a month.
You get quotes for housework, apply to multiple jobs, test drive cars, but when it comes to health, we trust the first asshole with availability? Never again.
For a while I had a GP who did his med school in the Caribbean. He was fine. I knew he did it there.
During one exam he asked me where I did my grad school. I respond and reflexively ask him and his response was “Blah blah school of medicine in The Grenadines. But the guy who graduates last in his class there is still called ‘Doctor’”.
I would rather have the last in his class doctor from some Caribbean country that listens to his patients than the ego doctor at the top of his class at John’s Hopkins that doesn’t.
I live in Texas and I was lucky/smart enough to tell my PCP to piss off and walk into an urgent care where a nurse who was born in Maryland immediately diagnosed me and gave me antibiotics. If you get a tick bite do not ignore this. It will fuck up your life if you do. It’s insane your doctor didn’t just proactively prescribe antibiotics. The long term effects of Lyme disease are bad enough that it is absolutely something that is worth giving antibiotics for even if you aren’t 100% sure.
The incident has made me have a pretty strong skepticism of whatever doctors say. I now know that you, and only you, are responsible for your own medical care unfortunately. It is insufficient to trust someone simply because they have the letters MD after their name