Feeling better when pausing the treatment?

YES! and that makes it hard to start back up after a break. But, it's just the eye of the storm going over....and, BTW, it will most likely be the lessening or lack of herxing causing the better feeling and not the abx side effects. Unless you are truly allergic to an abx (I am to the -cyclines), there seem to be few side effects except the killing of of the good bacteria in your body - this can be counteracted very effectively with probiotics!.

I've noticed that when I go off abx I do feel better for a couple of days, but then I start to feel a little worse, usually.

It might be a good time to do a little extra detoxing - that way you can clear out your body a little and make it that much healthier for the next round.

Haven't tried this one yet...will ask my doc about it...I have 8 more days till my abx break...still scared that I will feel bad and that my eye damage will be permanent and unstoppable :(

yeah, my doc just said I should go on a vegetarian diet, drink 4-5 liters of mixed herbal tea and lemon juice and wrote me a long prescription of drugs (some made of herbals, 2 abx, 1 drug against parasites, something for increasing blood flow towards the brain and the peripheral tissues, liver and stomach protectives).
So, I'm still reading here about detox :)

I've got fairly limited experience, but I would guess that the improvements come from your body having a chance to flush out toxins and detox, without getting inundated by the fresh ones as antibiotics kill the bugs off. It's also possible some of it is side effects from the antibiotics- although I'd be more inclined to think it was less side-effects, and more actual effects, like killing off good bacteria in your stomach, etc. I'm probably biased, because I tried stopping antibiotics before my symptoms were gone, and just got progressively worse, but if I were you, I would definitely just try to focus a lot on detox and see if that helps, before blaming it all on side effects...but I'll be honest, my first go-around, I did SOME detox, but I'm guessing not enough (part of the reason I quit treatment was because I was sick of the effects of antibiotics on my body). Other people here know more, so listen to them. And I definitely wouldn't start everything at once!

Everything we put into your body - including the food we eat - can not only have an impact, but can affect us either negatively or positively. That's why there's so much ado about different diets to follow while a person is in treatment.

Are you doing anything for detoxing right now? It seems that there's a lot of LLMD's that don't bother to tell their patients about detoxing. Maybe they don't know about it or maybe they just figure that a patient will figure it out, but almost all patients say -once they have started detoxing - that it helps a lot! I think that a lot of what you are going through is most likely due to the die off of bacteria because of the abx. - that's why we encourage everyone to detox. The body is just gets overloaded with toxins!

Toxins and inflammation create a herx (lymebook.com/blog/the-recovery-process/herx-reactions/herx-reaction-fundamentals/) and although there is healing happening while a minor herx is happening, any thing more severe doesn't help as the body will begin to direct it's energies to dealing with the herx rather than fighting the infection(s). Helping the body to get rid of those toxins will only help you heal. Although this should be started slowly as well! I'm no the only one who has had a pretty bad herx from using a detox bath that's either too hot or too long to start off with!

Your doc was right about the reduced dosages of abx and your treatment. The level of abx in your blood needs to stay above a certain level in order to be bactericidal (killing the bacteria), otherwise all it's doing is inhibiting it's reproduction/growth.

I had reactions to the medications and bad herxes that led to heart issues. My doc had me stop the meds for 4 days or so every now and then, and then press on.

Now he has me on a lower dose, yes, for a longer period of time, but I prefer that to feeling very sick, and esp. heart stuff is creepy.

Pulsing works well for some.

Just saying, going a bit easier works better for some of us, and, yes, too much at once can be just that, too much at once...