Oh boy did I ever hate that mal de dembarquement!! As you said, it's different from dizziness. I had both for a while and that was really miserable.
Having everything in your blood work come back 'normal' and still having all those symptoms is quite typical of Lyme, actually.
Band 18 is indicative of a flagellin fragment. The flagellin is the tail of the spirochete bacteria. There are several spirochete infections. "The family Spirochaetales is distinguished by the helical shape of the bacteria. They are too thin to be visualized using routine microscopy but can be viewed using darkfield microscopy. There are 3 genera: Treponema, Leptospira, and Borrelia."
(
www.merckmanuals.com/professional/infectious-diseases/spirochetes/introduction-to-spirochetes)
"Disease-causing members of this phylum include the following:
Leptospira species, which causes leptospirosis
Borrelia burgdorferi, B. garinii, and B. afzelii, which cause Lyme disease*
Borrelia recurrentis, which causes relapsing fever
Treponema pallidum subspecies which cause treponematoses such as syphilis and yaws.
Brachyspira pilosicoli and Brachyspira aalborgi, which cause intestinal spirochaetosis"
(
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirochaete* of course we know that there are more strains of Borrelia that make us sick, as there are over 100 known to cause human illness.
IMHO, until the political fight ends, there won't be any 'clear evidence' of Lyme - the 'other side' is making sure of that, so we have to go by symptoms.
The thing is, if you don't get treatment now, things will only get worse. You won't test positive the longer you wait, it's actually the opposite. The longer the infection goes, the harder it is to test positive. That's because the only tests we have are based on antibody responses. But, this requires a well functioning immune system, and Lyme reduces the immune function, so we don't produce those super important antibodies.
Lyme disease is one of the most complex bacteria that creates one of the most complex illnesses known at this time. How many other infections/conditions can say that migrating symptoms is normal?
The absolute best way to know for sure if you have Lyme is to start treatment and (believe it or not) hope to herx, or just feel better. Herxing is all about
the detox pathways of the body being overloaded, creating increasing symptoms and even new symptoms - but it's an indicator that the treatments are doing what they should be doing - killing the bacteria.
I was reinfected in the summer of 2014. I went into complete denial first and then waffled back and forth about
whether or not that symptom was due to Lyme or if I was attributing everything to Lyme. I about
drove myself (& hubby!) crazy with all of that. I finally accepted that the only way for me to know for sure was to start treatment - boy am I glad I did. I was 3 months into the infection when I finally got all my herbs here to start the treatment that I know is effective for me, and 5 months later, I was healed again.
Hang in there, Raincity. We are literally at the cutting edge of medicine and so we often have to "feel" our way along, as do our doctors.