To Harold

[Guest guest]

Harold wrote:

After 10 years, my rheumatic condition still does no have a

convincing diagnosis. Different rheumatologists have diagnosed me

with rheumatoid arthritis, pseudo-gout, polymyalgia rheumatica, and

most recently, reactive arthritis. My personal diagnosis now leans

toward fibromyalgia, even though the latter does not explain the

periodic and very painful fluid buildup in my knees

Hi Harold,

Only a thought as I read your email. Have you ever considered Lyme disease and

had the IGeneX Lyme labs run? A lot of chronic Lyme patients get thrown into the

" I don't know what it is, " bucket and receive innumerable diagnoses, as the

standard tests for Lyme miss 50% of cases. How you described your periodic,

painful fluid buildup in your knees sounds very like my Lyme knees (well, my one

Lyme knee now, as the other is almost normal with treatment). In fact, my LLMD

called my case of seropositive RA a form of " reactive arthritis, " because he

said I was " reacting " to a complex set of infections. I sometimes wonder if,

when all rheumatic illness is tracked down to infection, they will all be placed

under the umbrella of " reactive arthritis. "

Maz