The JRA was before the lymes. Because of the JRA, he couldn’t fight the lymes with the antibiotics they gave him and it became permanent. Breast feeding could POSSIBLY have given him a stronger immune system and protected him from the JRA which I was told was caused by having strep throat that his father failed to treat him for.
As for a Lymes literate doctor, what should I look for in trying to find one that is better in treating that condition? I’m having trouble getting proper treatment for him, and he suffers terrible headaches and muscle pains!
As for a Lymes literate doctor, what should I look for in trying to find one that is better in treating that condition?
Things have been changing over the last 10 years from when I first researched all this stuff, but a big part of the problem with getting treatment for chronic Lyme disease is that mainstream medical thinking was that chronic Lyme disease didn't exist. Up until a few/several years ago, the CDC listed treatment for Lyme disease as 2 weeks of doxycycline, then everything will be fine! But many, many people were discovering that the two weeks didn't do a thing. Meanwhile, most doctors were simply taking the CDC's thinking as gospel, and refusing to consider the possibility of a long-term chronic infection.
However, doctors here and there, who were trying to treat these chronic patients, realized that the conventional thinking about the disease was wrong and set about determining their own course of treatment (usually heavy, long-term antibiotic use), often placing their industry reputations at risk for bucking the mainstream thinking. Those are the "Lyme literate" doctors, because they have real world experience with treatment instead of going by some glossy CDC pamphlet and claiming that it's all in your head when the two weeks of doxy doesn't do squat.
I don't know how much research you've already done (some of this you may already know), but here are a couple of links that can help you out:
A write-up on the Lyme doctor situation:
http://www.chroniclymedisease.com/llmd-referrals
This one is a support group/discussion forum, but can have a lot of good info:
http://flash.lymenet.org/scripts/ultimatebb.cgi
Bear in mind that, this being the internet, you'll have to sift through a lot of junk as well as good info.
Unfortunately, I have a pretty good amount of experience with this sort of research, so if you're interested, you can shoot me a private message and I'll talk to you further about it, so we don't clutter the thread.