Fatigue

So you only had 10 weeks of treatment total? Or was that just a recent treatment? Are you seeing a LLMD? If you had Lyme for 4 years, 10 weeks total of abx. treatment is not long enough at all and you will still have an active infection.

I would suggest that you look into the natural protocols that you can do at home! You are so right about stopping treatments for that long!

I also completely agree with Mystery Illness - there's no way that chronic Lyme is taken care of with just 10 weeks of abx!

Also, has anyone investigated if you have any of the co-infections? If not, you need to be evaluated for those as well because Lyme rarely travels by itself and if you have one of those other infections, it can actually prevent you from healing from Lyme disease.

There are a couple of other options that you could use if you don't want to use the natural protocols.

hishorselover,

I completely agree that that treatment is not adequate. Generally monotherapy (one med at a time) is not effective. Plus you have had nothing to go after the cystic form which you almost certainly have since you've had Lyme so long and were on doxy alone for 5 weeks. The dose of doxy was also not the most effective 400mg would have been better. Those two meds would have done nothing to address babesia or bartonella if you have them.

I would definitely keep the appointment with a LLMD and in the meantime, looking into herbal suggestions like Traveler mentioned would be a good idea. I started on bromelain, japanese knotweed and andrographis in the beginning before any abx.

My main concern with starting herbs before seeing a LLMD was that it would mess up the testing. However, I was told that these herbs will NOT interfere with testing and it looks like you may have already tested positive anyway?

I've heard one of the strongest combos with the best reputation is samento/banderol. I'm not sure if that does interact with testing though.

Good luck!

Hi hishorselover -

There's nothing about lyme, bartonella or EBV in the results you posted so I can't say much, although for what it's worth, as you probably know, test results aren't necessarily reliable. I'm sorry you have to go through all this extra added uncertainty but I am glad you're seeing a LLMD. Keep in mind that if you do have bartonella it's usually necessary to target that before the lyme, or at least alongside it.

For fatigue, I've found some herbs pretty helpful, particularly those in the ginseng family. Some of these are a little strong and therefore usually need some time on and some time off so you don't crash your immune system, but it might be something to look into. You could consider seeing an herbalist or naturopath in the meantime? You might also want to look into the functioning of your adrenals as this is often related to fatigue and happens a lot in people with lyme and EBV. Licorice is a pretty good antiviral herb as well, although I'm not sure if it necessarily helps with fatigue or not.

Some other things are kind of catch 22's - exercise helps once you can get past the initial getting totally wiped out after excercise - I know that's easier said than done. Giving up caffeine too, if you tend to take in a lot of it - makes you more tired at first but in the long run it helps. Other than that anything you can do to detox might take some of the burden off of you as far as pain, fatigue, and overall health. A clean diet, fresh juices, green smoothies, limiting sugar - and any of the suggestions in the "new to lyme" thread for detoxing, along with the millions of other strategies out there, things like chlorella, oil pulling, lymphatic drainage, coffee enemas, the list goes on and on, and of course, quality sleep - a limited comodity these days, I know.