eli5: what is the difference between chronic lyme disease and lyme disease? How can it be debilitating?
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First off, not going to reply to the other person because they’re technically right and I don’t want to bug them, but while post-treatment lyme disease is the official name for experiencing symptoms after you’ve technically recovered, I would expect many people like you use chronic lyme disease to describe post-treatment lyme – it would have been my instinct too.
I think their explanation was pretty good, so I’ll provide an additional analogy that’s been in the news a lot more: covid.
Normal covid has symptoms in common with colds and flus – coughs, fevers, losing your sense of smell, fatigue etc. This is like the original infection with lyme disease – the pathogen causing the disease is replicating in your body and damaging your cells.
Long covid happens more commonly in people who had severe cases, but can show up even in mild cases. Even after the virus is gone, you still get symptoms, although they tend to be more similar to chronic illness like chronic fatigue syndrome: shortness of breath lasting for long periods, brain fog, small amounts of exertion completely wiping you out for several days. The prevalent theories are that it has something to do with the overreaction of the immune system, but we’re not sure. Post-treatment lyme is analogous to long covid. Many of its symptoms are similar to long covid – brain fog, chronic fatigue etc. It can also include muscle issues and I believe partial paralysis in the vein of nerves sending signals but muscles not responding, although I’m not certain on that one. We’re not sure what causes it because it’s only been recognized as a real thing for a few years (as it often is with chronic illnesses), but its likely its the same sort of immune system damage as covid.
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