The Lyme Disease Clusterf*ck - 193/365
- 26 months
- 33 Rx
- 22 oral herbs or enzymes
- 19 oral supplements
- 5 months Rx IM shots, daily
- 7 months Rx IV, daily
- 3 months of Rx Sub Q shots, daily
Are we there yet? This is the Lyme Disease Clusterf*ck.
Am I better yet? I'm better than I was 26 months ago. Am I cured? Hell no. Am I recovered? Not yet. When will I recover? Your guess is as good as mine.
Tags: Project 365
Keep working at it! My wife has been working through lyme+babesia, also with ehrlichia and anaplasma -(both resolved early ) - all from the initial tick bite in our garden. A year later she had a tick bite in bed (probably courtesy of our dog Angie, her faithful companion) that had rickettsia/rocky mountain spotted fever when tested - I think Juno knows about this infection.
She is now at month 30 and for much of this time has been essentially bed ridden. Treatment looks similar to Julie's list, except no IV antibiotics. A big difference is that my wife knew she had lyme from her initial tick bite and had initial treatment (after a big fight with her PCP) which left her feeling great (mountain hiking, etc.) for about three months while the lyme and babesia were digging in for the long haul. Our big mistake was not starting out with our "family doctor" (good friend and lyme-experinced ND) who is now co-leading her treatment - largely as we had no idea how serious lyme could be...
I am fortunate to work out of a home office and was able to quit business travel - largely thanks to video Skype as I have had to be a 24/7 caregiver, do all our errands, prepare all meals and attempt to coordinate her care with the four doctors in her treatment "team". We are fortunate in southern Maine to have some very experienced lyme/co-infection practitioners as we are very unfortunate to have so much tick-bourne infection\. I don't think there is a dog in our town that has not had lyme.
About six months ago, she finally started to make progress, only to relapse seriously about four months ago - which was terribly discouraging. And finally about two months ago she began to make real progress again. She has been reluctant to think she will really be healed some time relatively soon - maybe six more months? And even if her lyme+babesia is finally resolve, it will take a long time to build back her strength and stamina.
One of my wife's NDs has stressed to me all along this path that the body has incredible ability to heal - we just need to give it the help (antibiotics/herbal protocols, etc.), time and "space" to be able to finally resolve the infections.
My wife's niece here in Maine came down with nero-lyme about eight years ago and cycled through something like twenty-two doctors (several of whom diagnosed her as mentally ill!) before she finally was properly diagnosed and treated. It took her several years to heal as she would not do antibiotics. Today she has four children (two are adopted adopted foster children), home schools them, raises a great many chickens and seems to have endless energy - another real-world example of healing from lyme.
Sorry to be so long with this comment, but we need MUCH MORE awareness of how terrible tick-bourne infections can be and how little useful research is being done to address them.
So have faith and you are so lucky to have your dogs to help you through this!
Julie it's hard to imagine you've been on treatment for over two years. Comment from Joe is very encouraging. Curious what his niece did medically that did not include antibiotics. After neuro-lyme 25 years ago, I didn't recovered "all my marbles", but certainly enough to get back in the game. You will too, Julie.
What a nightmare! I hope you can recover soon. Is it possible to be completely ride of Lyme? I'd always heard it would forever be in your system, but dormant.... I don't know much though. Most of what I've learned is from your blog.