[netaustin]

Not a tangent! I certainly appreciate the semantics, and there seems to be some academic interest in the semantics alone! Some Lyme researchers would like to call it “Lyme Disease Facial Palsy” or LDFP to encourage practitioners to differentiate early. Not sure that would’ve helped me, I had no bullseye rash and no fever, just horrible fatigue and facial paralysis. The idea would be to encourage practitioners in Lyme-prone locations to see Bell’s, test for Lyme, which I think your point about overlooking the link between condition and the cause supports. Lyme showed up on a blood test my PCP ordered only after I completed a course of prednisone with no improvement and much misery. He didn’t even tell me he added a Lyme test, but I’m glad he did!

Here’s one paper on the topic I remember reading at the time: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8791801/