hormonal birth control and Lyme?

Hey everyone.

So, I have endometriosis and am currently on the NuvaRing on a 3 months on, one week off basis.
When I first tried hormonal bc I used the pill. I quit that after about two months because I found it was spiking my anxiety and giving me stomach upsets (nausea). I went without birth control for a long time after that, and tried to just exercise as much as possible and eat well. The three weeks out of the month that I didn't have my period I was pretty fine and healthy feeling.
Fast forward to when I was 18, I got on the OrthoEvra patch. Because while the 3 weeks out of the month were good, dealing with the pain one week was bad enough. The patch went well for about four months, and then I started developing rashes. It wasn't a big deal to me, it was like eczema localized to where the patch went. But then a couple months later I started having horrible stomach problems (massive gas-like pains, diarrhea, feverish). I suffered through that for about just over a month and ended up in the ER twice not sure what was going on. Eventually I clued in that it got bad every time I put on a new patch, so when I took it off and stopped all my symptoms went away.
Again, I was doing pretty good after that. Exercising, working full-time, even went on a small vacation. about two months without birth control, I started the NuvaRing in September of last year. I also started college. NuvaRing was good and I had my period the first month and it seemed to be easier than without birth control. I became slightly more sensitive "down there" but not a big deal. First semester of college went by not too bad, but I was juggling that and work at the same time. I went on two months on NuvaRing and then one week off at first, then switched to 3 months on and one week off around December. December was a hard month and VERY stressful so I'm sure that alone probably made me worse. Since then I've been very persistently sick. I eventually lost my job because of my health, which was fine because it was hard to balance given I was in a math course as well that was giving me a ton of stress.
This entire time from around the end of April to now I've been on the NuvaRing without a break (now would be my break time).


I've been wondering, does hormonal BC aggravate Lyme? When I got my first very bad shaking attacks, it was the morning after I put in the ring for this third month. Then as the month went on my attacks slowed and stopped. It may be total coincidence, but I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this or info on it???

Hmmm, yeah maybe I should try and see if I can handle that, because I'm beginning to think that 3 months on is too much for me.
My issue is that I'm on 3 months in a row due to the intensity of my periods, it can be a lot to try and cope with. Maybe I'll scale back slowly to two months on first and see how I handle it.

My mom talked to me about it the other day, actually! She told me about these things called "oil packs" that she can make that might help the pain, but she needs to make an order for all that stuff first because all of her other herbs and supplements and everything she has are too old now. I plan on seeing the ND in the next town over, and I'm gonna do another acupuncture appointment because I think it helped last time.
I kind of feel like I should go with my "gut instinct" and start to go off birth control. I'm going to stay on but scale it back until I can figure out natural treatment and see how that works for a while. My body is so sensitive and with the history I have with other birth controls I think it's probably safe to assume that although the NuvaRing doesn't seem to be giving me horrible symptoms, it's probably not making things much better.

Ugh, I feel you on the pain part! Last time I started taking magnesium during it and it seemed to take the edge off a tad. At least enough that I wasn't feeling like I had to be put on morphine or something, haha.
Usually all I can do is bury myself in hot water bottles, take ibuprofen and magnesium, eat less, drink more water and sleep as much as possible.

Its good to hear that your herbs and supplements have been going well! I've emailed two ND's now and I'm trying to make a list of common treatments I see people using successfully. It seems like darn near everyone uses cats claw! I emailed one of the ND's about the endometriosis as well. She's a registered midwife and has treated menopausal disorders so I'm hoping she should know about endo as well.