>>1534134You ask questions that fundamentally relate to perception but these are taboo in medicine because it attacks the testimony of the patient. I have had patients come in argue with me about them not being sick, when they clearly were. You seem intelligent. Therein lies part of your problem. You are assuming other people have the level of baseline sentience and self-awareness as you do and would be able to discern symptoms from subjective experience. Much less being a child, and knowing of nothing other than the mild aches and pains, in the midst of energetic youth. Most symptoms can indeed be ignored but that does not mean the disease isn't exerting deleterious effects. Divorced from the obsessivity component, the same issue with perception and self-observation is also fundamentally responsible for hypochondriasis. It's unfortunate in the scheme of things, as the malingers and histrionics claiming to have lyme make it out to be much worse than it is, which, alters the overall public perception of it, making those reporting benign symptoms to be likely ignored, who ironically are most likely to have and suffer from the disease.