How are you getting checked? I understood (perhaps wrongly) that the blood tests are only accurate well beyond the window with which the medications are effective, creating a chicken and egg issue.
After a couple of days in the mountains, I found four ticks, and one bite started to turn red after two weeks.
I went to the doctor, she said the tests at this phase are unreliable, my bite could be Lyme, but could be something else too (the bulls eye rings didn't form yet). She said the pragmatic approach is too treat it as if it was Lyme and take antibiotics. It's better to take some antibiotics than wait for the symptoms (which are not always easy to assign to lyme).
There's no definitive accredited lab check as far as I know. At least here in Germany the official serologic tests for late stage Lyme can come back negative for years until the disease really progresses badly - even cerebrospinal fluid results may be normal despite neurological symptoms. My specialist uses elispot lab tests for Borrelia b. OspA, antigen and LFA-1 markers.
Other practitioners use westernblot lab results and differential diagnosis.
Recovery with Lyme isn’t always forever. It apparently goes into remission and comes back later. Not sure if anyone knows why or how it does that. AFAIK it is only cured if treated very quickly, before the blood tests are accurate.
