The new lab, scheduled for completion at the University of Maine in 2017, will accelerate the process of identifying infected ticks and give doctors information more quickly, speeding up the diagnosis and therefore the successful treatment of Lyme cases.

That’s important to people like Rebecca Nelson of Scarborough, who finally tested positive for Lyme in January for a disease she believes she got decades ago. Nelson wants the public to recognize the severity of Lyme and increase awareness among doctors and the public.

“It was relief. I finally knew what was wrong with me. I had gotten so tired of people thinking that I was crazy,” said Nelson, 39, recalling how she felt when she was diagnosed. She describes symptoms ranging from chronic fatigue, pain and insomnia to anger and short-term memory problems.

“They sound like such generic symptoms. I don’t think people believe it’s as debilitating an illness as it really is,” she said.

Through November, the Maine CDC reported 1,231 Lyme infections this year, on track to be the second-highest year on record. The cases spike in the summer — when ticks are most active — with more than half of 2014’s reported infections coming in July, August and September. Lyme disease has spread across much of the eastern United States, especially the Northeast, and nationally cases have increased exponentially over the past few years, according to the U.S. CDC, with over 25,000 cases in 2013.

While the UMaine lab voters approved on Nov. 4 also will research animal and plant diseases and other insect-borne diseases, a major component of its mission will be to identify ticks and test them for Lyme. The testing will help researchers determine the scope of the problem and get information on infected ticks more quickly to doctors treating patients, said James Dill, pest management specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.

The waiting period for Lyme test results — ticks are currently tested out of state — should decrease from several weeks to about 48 hours, Dill said.

Getting timely information to doctors will help them diagnose Lyme disease more quickly, which increases the effectiveness of treatments. Lyme is notoriously difficult to diagnose in part because its symptoms, which include joint pain, chronic fatigue and inflammation, mimic other diseases, and many people don’t realize they’ve been bitten by a tick.

Because Lyme is often misdiagnosed, scientists believe the number of actual cases is 10 times greater than the reported numbers, according to Susan Elias, a researcher with the Maine Medical Center Research Institute.

Nelson, the Scarborough woman with Lyme, has been seeing doctors for years complaining of various pains and problems. She tested negative for Lyme in 2007 — she said it was a false negative — and positive for Lyme this year.

The treatment and recovery have been slow, she said, with improvement over the summer but backsliding this fall.

“I don’t know what normal is. I don’t remember normal,” said Nelson, 39, explaining that the disease is difficult to describe. “The feeling is like when you have the flu and you’re tired and achy and that all you want to do is go to bed. That’s the way I feel much of the time. Your best day is when you feel like you’re almost over the flu.”

Nelson owns a horse stable and gives riding lessons to students, so doctors would often attribute her pain to muscle strains from working on her farm or fatigue from having young children around the house. But Nelson said she would suffer from the pains even when she didn’t strain her muscles, and she later discovered the problem was due to inflammation from Lyme.

Nelson’s physician, Dr. Keelyn Wu, a Falmouth doctor who specializes in Lyme treatment, has about 50 patients with the disease and had to turn away new Lyme patients because the demand was more than he could handle.

If caught early, Lyme treatment is straightforward with patients taking a course of antibiotics to clear up the infection.

But many cases are not caught early, and when not diagnosed within a few months of the tick transmitting the bacteria, diagnosis and treatment become messy. Wu said there’s controversy in the medical community on everything from what constitutes a positive test to how to treat the disease and even what to call a long-term Lyme diagnosis.

“There are still some doctors who do not believe chronic Lyme disease exists,” said Wu, who says his reading of the research concludes that chronic Lyme disease is a real disease that needs specialized treatment. “It’s a very individualized disease. No two cases are completely alike.”

Because of a lack of understanding and awareness, the medical community is mostly unprepared for the influx of Lyme cases, Wu said, noting there are only a dozen doctors statewide with in-depth Lyme expertise.

“There are not enough physicians out there who are able to treat Lyme,” he said. “They don’t know where to start, how to address it or where to refer (patients) to. The testing is often unreliable, a lot of false negatives.”

Wu said most primary care practices are not set up to treat people with a long-term Lyme illness. Lyme consultations can take up to two hours, follow-ups at least 30 minutes and treatment plans are individualized. Many primary care doctors schedule 15 minutes for patient consultations and are dealing with diseases, such as diabetes or asthma, that have a well-known course of treatment, Wu said.

For patients who were initially not diagnosed and have long-term Lyme disease, treating with antibiotics alone is insufficient, he said. So he advocates dietary changes and over-the-counter nutritional supplements in addition to medications. It often takes a lot of mixing and matching before hitting on the correct treatment that eases symptoms.

Nelson takes five prescription medications, including anti-anxiety drugs, and six over-the-counter supplements, including dietary, detox and herbal supplements. Out-of-pocket, she pays about $4,000 to $5,000 per year to treat her symptoms. She said she felt “great” for about 10 weeks in summer and early fall, but started struggling again with pain and fatigue in recent weeks.

Dr. Phillip Baker, executive director of the Connecticut-based American Lyme Disease Foundation, said that even in Connecticut, where Lyme disease was discovered, some doctors are not as well-versed in the disease as they could be.

But Baker said the U.S. CDC has an effective training tool on its web site about Lyme that counts toward physicians’ continuing education requirements, so promoting the site or other training would be helpful. Baker said that in the 10 northeastern states where Lyme disease is most common, the states should band together for regional strategies to help combat Lyme.

He said a Lyme vaccine developed for mice “looks promising” and could be an environmental way to control the problem and reduce the percentage of ticks carrying Lyme, Baker said.

While deer carry the ticks that transmit Lyme to humans, the ticks contract the Lyme bacteria from mice, so Baker said vaccinating mice by baiting them in the wild could prove effective. When the mice become vaccinated and produce antibodies to destroy the Lyme bacteria, fewer ticks would become carriers.

A human vaccine for Lyme was available in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but was pulled from the market after some patients complained of arthritis. Although one pharmaceutical company, Baxter International, was researching a new human vaccine, that research is now on hold. Baker said he doesn’t have much hope that a new human vaccine will be brought to market soon.

In addition to the University of Maine bond issue, which Gov. Paul LePage supported, the Maine CDC has intensified its public education efforts about Lyme disease over the past few years, said Maine CDC spokesman John Martins.

Public health officials attend events and the administration promotes May as Lyme Disease Awareness Month. The state also hosts an annual poster contest for students in grades K-8.

For Nelson, the goal is to get through every day with enough energy to operate her business and help around the house. Taking Wu’s advice, she has cut most processed food from her diet, and her family now raises more than 50 chickens, 30 turkeys and a cow for home-grown meat, and she doubled the size of the vegetable garden. She said eating better has helped, or it has at least slowed the progression of the disease.

“I can’t think long-term. It’s too overwhelming,” Nelson said. “I’m just taking it day by day.”