the path we choose

Ya know, Dr. Buhner has a website and I'm pretty sure he lists out symptoms and their possible causes due to co-infections. Dr. Jernigan may on his website as well. A lot of symptoms overlap, it's true. But some symptoms are very specific to certain co-infections. You may be able to save yourself some money by doing this and skipping the co-infections testing. Because like all the testing done with Lyme and co-infections it's not that reliable. Half of the people on here don't have positive tests for ANYTHING, let alone co-infections. You could save yourself a lot of money. It's my opinion and hopefully there will be others along soon that may have better insight into this than me. But with tests being unreliable as they are, what if it comes back negative? Then what ? You'll think you don't have co-infections when you very well may.

If you want to spend your money on a test, I would say spend it on a test done by Dr. F in Arizona. He does a special stain that shows you exactly what is in your blood. The test I did was $450 but you can pay extra for him to figure out exactly what the organism is that he finds if he does, in fact, find anything. There is no denying your infection when you see the photo of your infected blood! That's what happened to me and I think it's the best money I've ever spent in MY LIFE because had I not seen that, I would have always questioned my doctor's belief that I really had Lyme. When you don't have a positive test it's hard to go on gut instinct. It's disease is such a frustrating guessing game but as I said, there is no denying a picture of your infected blood. Good luck whatever you decide!

Tom,

I am so sorry that you have been sick for so long. I can identify with you- I made some very bad and costly decisions in the past as well while to trying to get my daughter well.

Any time that you can gain reliable information that is useful to becoming well, it is a reall plus. I use to work for a clinical reference laboratory many years ago. I know of the usefulness of the wide array of tests that are available. I am not anti laboratory testing. The problem is the way that the modern conventional healthcare system works. A sick person presents to the physician with a set of symptoms. The physician consults his PDR, and/or pulls from his own resevoir of experience. He then orders what he thinks are the appropriate tests. There is some value in this method, but it is very limited when dealing with the extremely debilitated patients that lyme sufferers often are. First, doctor's that accept insurance often only order tests that they know that the insurance companies will pay for. Secondly, other than blood chemistry profiles, most of the tests are very narrow in scope, i.e. they are only testing for one thing, or a few things. The third problem is related to the second. A doctor is not going to order tests for every known pathogen, or tests for every possible vitamin, mineral, hormone, or enzyme in the body. They are not going to test the status of every organ in the body. Frankly, conventional medical pracitioners generally do not possess the tools to measure many of the dysfunctions that can occur in the body. I am not saying that many of the tools that they use for testing are not good ones. I am saying that they don't know what they don't know! It would be prohibitively expensive for a conventional practitioner to use every test that could be even remotely applicable from his toolkit. The fourth problem is that the tests that test for the presence of pathogens are often inaccurate.

There is a better way. It is a way that would confirm the validity of your clinical reference laboratory tests, and would in fact give a lot more informationn than those tests could ever provide. There is a type of testing that is based on frequency testing in the body. I am personally familiar with electro-dermal testing such as computronix and Asyra. I am also personally familiar with Dr. Jernigan's proprietary testing which he calls Bioresonance. You can gain a lot more accurate information from these bioenergetic tests than you can from the conventional tests, especially in areas that the conventional tests are weakest, such as in a situation such as yours. And this revealing testing information comes at a much much lower cost!

Heather was tested with the Asyra testing system three months before her Igenix Western Blot came back indeterminate. The Asyra test for Lyme revealed that she was positive for Borrelia Garinii, and had a high pathogrn count. Her Igenix test for Bartonella was negative. Her Asyra test for Bartonella was positive, and had a high pathogen count.

The testing results for Babesia was fascinating to me, and confirmed the vast superiority of bio-energetic testing. Heather was tested by the Asyra about 3 months before we found her first LLMD. When the LLMD told us what tests that she intended to test for, she said that she would test for Babesia Microti. She said that Babesia Duncani was not as common in Maryland, and that it would probably be a waste of money since we were already going to have to pay a lot for these tests. Remembering the Asyra tests from 3 months prior, I told her that the Asyra test for Babesia Microti was negative, but that it was positive for Babesia Duncani. She rolled her eyes and agreed to test for Babesia Duncani, but also insisted on testing for Babesia Microti. Can you guess what the test results were? The Igenix results came back negative for Babesia Microti and positive for Babesia Duncani. I can tell you that the LLMD was not happy with us telling her what to do, and being right!

We ended up taking Heather to the Hansa Center with Dr. J. He has developed his own proprietary testing method called Bioresonance. His testing is generations beyond the Computronix and Asyra, and can give a lot more information. His tests revealed that the Borrelia, Bartonella, and Babesia were still afflicting Heather. He also picked up that Heather had Erhlichiosis, West Nile Virus, and HHV6. That did not surprise me, as Heather had spent a lot of time outside the previous summer, as she was feeling somewhat better before she relapsed later. She had a lot of nasty misquito bites that took forever to heal. His testing also revealed a lot of other issues that most conventional medical practitioners wouldn't even think of.

I am not bashing LLMD's in general, because LLMD's such as Dietrich Klinghardt have state of the art testing capabilities. I am bashing the narrow scope of testing that many LLMD's limit themselves to. The most cost effective and illuminating thing that you could do is to find a healthcare practitioner that employs this type of testing. If you love your LLMD, then fine. You can still find an alternative healthcare practitioner that does this type of testing, to work with the LLMD. My experience is that various bioenergetic scans cost us $200-$300. As you know, $300 of conventional testing doesn't get very much information.

The bottom line is that it is all about getting better within the financiall framework that we have to work with. I realize that this may be a new PATH for you, but this path may lead to the goals that you are seeking.

Don

Post Edited (Heathersdad) : 12/13/2012 10:10:40 PM (GMT-7)

Tom-

A good LLMD will treat you based on symptoms...Even Igenex testing can be incorrect :(.  Co-infection testing is about as good.

There is a LLMD in Gaineville..that is the very closest you will get to Ocala.

We are neighbors (almost)...I am in Palatka :)

Hi Tom!
Welcome to our forum! I'm so sorry to hear what you have been through so far, but you've come to a great place to learn so much more!

If you haven't yet, please do read through our "New to Lyme? Start here!" thread, as it contains a great deal of information, helpful links and pdf's and symptom lists to help you determine which infections you may be dealing with.

Please don't trust an ID doc with your treatments for these infections though, they don't acknowledge that chronic Lyme even exists - despite tons of research showing that it does - and believe that Lyme is hard to get and very easy to treat with just a few weeks of abx. If you still have symptoms, which almost all do, then you are told that your infection is gone and you have developed Post Lyme Syndrome - because they don't want to admit that they could have been wrong.

Please seek out a LLMD(Lyme Literate Medical Doctor) or go with Holistic Practitioners. In order to find a LLMD in your area, you can start a new thread titled something like:"Looking for LLMD in the _______ area."

You can also email our long time member, Dan's Mother at:[email protected]

You can also email Stephanie at: [email protected] You can also go to: www.turnthecorner.org/ if you want to learn a little bit more about Lyme Disease.

You can also go to The Lyme Disease Association and search for LLMD's 3 times in a month. You have to register first. Here is the link:www.lymediseaseassociation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=277&Itemid=74

You will want to find an ILADS (International Lyme And Associated Diseases Society) doctor. The ILADS site is another great place to read to get you started on your Lyme journey. www.ilads.org/lyme_disease/treatment_guidelines_clearing_ilads.html

As most have told you, the current testing for these infections leaves a lot to be desired - the bacteria's first order of business is to move out of the blood stream and into tissues, joints and organs, and only returns to the blood every 4 weeks or so to replicate. Not to mention that most of these tests only look for the immune response and this particular bacteria can fool our immune systems into thinking that there's nothing there, and even lower our immune system function as well.

Dark field microscopy is one way to not rely on the immune response for diagnosis, but it still relies on the bacteria being in the blood stream at the exact moment that the blood is taken.

So you can see why these blood tests aren't the most reliable way to determine if you have one of these infections. With you having all the classic symptoms, you almost certainly have the infection(s), and you could easily have co-infections as Lyme rarely is the only infection passed by insects.

Don't beat yourself up for mistakes that you may have made in regards to your treatments - when you don't know, you don't know. You are being very smart to want to educate yourself further now! We are here to help you find the answers you need!