In the Northeast and upper Midwest, people living near woods need to be on the lookout for tiny deer tick nymphs from late April through July. From October until the first snowstorm, the larger adult female deer tick, with its signature copper abdomen, is active. In California and other regions, ticks can be active year-round.

The juvenile stage of the tick is a real problem, because they're the size of a poppy seed. They attach to the body and stay attached for three to five days. They are hard to find if they are not in an obvious place and you're not looking for them.

Patients need to take it upon themselves to get educated so they have all their options in front of them and realize there's not just one approach to this illness. There's a controversy in the medical community.

According to the CDC, 95 percent of confirmed Lyme disease cases are reported from 14 states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. However, Lyme-disease-carrying ticks have been identified in all 50 states.

If you live in New England, you can get exposure doing things you wouldn't normally think of as high-risk activities, like walking across the lawn.

If you are bitten by a tick in a Lyme-epidemic area, quickly remove the parasite and bag it for potential testing. The faster you get the tick off, the better; but any time a tick is attached is long enough to get infected.

Early Lyme disease symptoms appear within three to 30 days and usually include a bull's -eye-shaped rash, but many people develop a solid rash or no rash. Flu-like symptoms such as headache, fever, muscle/joint aches and fatigue are also common.

Symptoms come on fairly quickly but often resolve after a few days or weeks. That's part of the problem. The disease can still be there and progress if the person isn't treated.

Even when treated with the recommended two to four weeks of antibiotics, an estimated 20 percent of people will develop chronic Lyme diseases.

When Lyme disease reoccurs, it can cause arthritis-like symptoms as well as neurological damage, heart and eye problems, limb weakness and poor motor coordination.

Lyme is called the great imitator because it mimics so many other diseases. It is almost like playing Whac-A-Mole in trying to figure out what is wrong. As soon as you get the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, for example, something else pops up that isn't related to fibromyalgia.

This is an ever-evolving disease in terms of our understanding of it. If you have the telltale signs of Lyme-or unexplained anything - go to an ILADS doctor, because they are not going to give up.