Ivermectin

My advice is you wait until you have been on the Rocephin for a little while longer and are past the peak of the herxing. Your MD is bombarding your poor little body w/ too much, IMO. Let it get accustomed to the abx for at least a couple wks and then add new things one at a time. Otherwise, it's also too difficult to know what reactions mean.

p

Parasite die off can be INTENSE. Plus, you've got to get rid of the debris after killing it… And it's all going on in your challenged GI.

Well, my herxing got better at 4 wks. I still have cognitive problems but the extreme psycho-neuro mess did lighten up by the 4th week, which was good because I was going off the deep end and fast.

-p

I feel really lucky that my experience has been mostly physical so far. I'm not counting on it staying that way. I've struggled with some really intense psychological stuff, so I definitely feel for you P. Funny how it varies so vastly for all of us. Keeps us on our toes.

Hm. My doctors thoughts were treating for parasites would hopefully fix some of my gut stuff. If my issues are from parasites then wouldn't it be a good thing to just get it over with and move on?? I did a stool test and it only showed candida. He said it didn't matter because that test doesn't always catch it. I did a spit test too.

My whole treatment plan besides the rocephin is all for gut health. My doc really wants my gut to be in a better place before doing much else. He's frustrated that nothing is working is why he decided parasite treatment would be worth a try.

here we go: http://lymebook.com/ivermectin-albendazole-diethylcarbamazine-alinia-mimosa-pudica

Btw IHL, I think exploring the parasite angle is smart and ivermectin is a great drug to use for this.

Traveler, I can't tell you how much it helps to have that reiterated, the importance of going slow, especially if a med is already hitting you hard. Sometimes you need to ease up or take a break.

I tend to be a full on kind of person, hi ho let's nail this sucker and be done! I'm so freakin sick of this thing! but nope, it is a marathon and speed and overambition can really put you in a bad spot. And it is very very important to remember treating these things is a marathon and finding the right pacing for one's own body, but it is very hard for ME to remember that!!

I'm totally skipping the parasite business for now. I'm so glad I posted. I'm too sick to think super clearly and that's usually when I get into trouble. I just look at my treatment plan paper and do what I'm supposed to for that day and then wonder why the heck I feel so bad. I LOVE the forum for this very reason.

I'm liking my doctor more and more. He way underestimated my level of suffering when I first started seeing him. I'm sure he's used of all his patients saying that they feel like they are dying because let's face it- it really does feel like that. So I think he had a hard time filtering what was really a big issue and what wasn't to give me proper care. When someone has 60 symptoms it can get confusing.

He is a naturopath so he can appreciate the whole body perspective that most MDs don't really get. First thing he said when he saw me was "oh crap, you're really really skinny. We have to deal with your gut issues before we can continue". The point of the abx right now is to feel better from them, not to herx. I'm backing way down. I felt better up until... yesterday and the night before.

Anyway. His hope is that I can get a picc placement covered for nutritional therapy. It's obvious that I'm losing weight and my blood work shows nutrient deficiency getting worse and worse. My records show I've tried every single nausea med known to man and I'm still losing weight anyway. So I'm hoping I can get that covered and it's none of their business if I put rocephin through it too.

I'll figure out what my body needs. I'm in no rush at all. Rushing makes everything worse. I've had enough setbacks so far. I've learned my lesson time and time again. I'm catching on that my body has a delayed reaction at a rate of about 3 or 4 days. With my mast cell stuff and all that I have to be careful even starting new supplements.

So. I've just got to suffer through this herx and hope it doesn't last past tuesday. I have to get my new hep lock placed and it's my next rocephin day. In the meantime I'll be detoxing like a MTHFR! hahaha any opportunity for a pun. By the way I finally found the right kind of b vitamins and folate for my MTHFR. I think that's really helped me detox too.

I am SO glad I read this, bc I think I have parasites, but have been reluctant to start "dewormer" (sorry, they use Ivermectin for dogs too, LOL), because of the potential herx.

I think I'm having some success with activated charcoal.

You might try that too IHL.

Margaret

Curious IHL & others who have a prescription to Ivermectin - how many days in a row does your doctor have you taking it?

2 days. I won't bring up dosage as I need to check the forum rules but not sure we are allowed to specify.

Daddylonglegs, love that you bring up that story, ivermectin is a fascinating drug with a fascinating holy crap we got so randomly lucky and hit the jackpot origin story. And exactly, what are all those possible drugs waiting to be discovered from nature?!

sebreg-

Just start eating soil like me ;) Sooner or later you'll be cured (or not). The cost to bring a new drug to the market is so much more expensive then it once was that I doubt there is much push to dig up soil samples all over the globe and look for new drugs...

Seems like its usually 2mg/6mg/12mg...

Absolutely Patty! really happy to share, ivermectin has been great for me and brought me to a new level, it really killed me with herxing for a long time. But I'm finally at a point now where I don't herx on this med anymore, and think I've reached a point of diminishing returns. I'd like to stay on it for a while longer but this llnd I just started seeing is having me expand my protocol so the timing is perfect for me, I'm finally ready to keep moving forward. I could not have added anything to my protocol before due to the severe herxes I was dealing with from ivermectin.

Klinghardt does massive doses of ivermectin, something in the ballpark of 48mg daily for two weeks? yikes! I could never have handled that. I was initially dosing once a week and that was crushing, I would herx all week from that one dose! but it really ended up working out for me in the end, and I now dose twice a week. My doc seems to say it has a long half life so you don't need to dose every day. My doc is also pretty conservative when it comes to dosing, other docs are more aggressive but not in the ballpark of Klinghardt, he is on the other end of the spectrum but his high dosing is for a short period.

Daddylonglegs, isn't that tragic? it's just so hard to fund these ventures, and everything seems to be done synthetically from scratch in the lab nowadays. Synthetic chemistry is a huge part of medicine and has a huge role and great benefits, but we need to explore and investigate all logical avenues. To me, ivermectin is a great example of the importance of thoroughly investigating nature and its complex chemical compounds and using those complex compounds as jumping off points for possible therapies. Evolution has allowed for the creation of fascinating amazing complex compounds that could never be dreamed of or created in the lab. But if you figure out what these nature compounds are and then manipulate them in the laboratory you can end up with some possibly great new therapies.

This is some neat info here, just found the article, haven't read it all but very interesting:
http://courses.umass.edu/mic590s/2009/Reading/Omura2004.pdf