Her unexplained jitteriness and weight loss were telling clues

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An unfortunate combination of faulty assumptions and missed opportunities delayed a common diagnosis.

For nearly a decade, Sherrill Franklin battled an elusive foe. She lost 22 pounds without trying. Her face was flushed, her neck felt sweaty and clammy, and she felt inexplicably jittery. At times Franklin, who lives in a rural community an hour west of Philadelphia, endured bouts of dizziness.It wasn’t until a worrisome new problem landed her in the hospital that a specialist, one of nearly two dozen doctors she consulted, ordered a blood test that revealed the reason she felt so sick.

“It’s been very expensive and it’s been miserable,” she said. Franklin is perturbed that doctors repeatedly appeared to overlook the likely cause of her illness. And she believes that some of her actions may have unintentionally contributed to the protracted diagnostic delay."I've learned a lot by going through what happened and why," she observed."I hope others do, too.

She said it was only after she contacted the Yale doctor who first identified Lyme disease that she learned she would need three weeks of intravenous antibiotics. She received treatment and fully recovered.In the weeks after her second Lyme diagnosis, Franklin said she was beset by a constellation of problems that included nervousness, muscle weakness and sweating.

For the next two years Franklin’s internist sent her to infectious-disease doctors and endocrinologists; she found other experts on her own. Some attributed her symptoms to menopause; others said her thyroid was malfunctioning and prescribed varying amounts of medication to treat fluctuating episodes of underactive or overactive thyroid, which can occur when the gland is inflamed.

 

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