Hi Jen--
First - a little context (I think context is very helpful).
I started my lyme & co journey in Feb 2014. I spent a few months healing my gut, supporting immune system and then focused on reducing yeast/fungal overgrowth and reducing viral load.
I finally started on Byron White antimicrobial herbs: Al-Complex for lyme, A-Babs and A-Bart. I had no reaction to the AL-Complex and moderate reactions to A-Babs. But A-Bart made the bart flare, including these horrible GI attacks that sent me to the ER. Took me a long time to tie the attacks to A-Bart.
I tried a few other lyme herbs and was quickly losing the ability to walk so my LLMD put me on IV Rocephin for lyme (helped bypass GI so that I didn't undo all the hard work I had done healing gut), which helped tremendously--been slowly improving for about
a year on Rocephin but it started hitting new pockets of the infection about
3 months ago (started to get tinnitus and another new sx but cant remember what it was) so waiting for those to get worked through so I can go off it...
I had a lot of other issues going on that made me have to stop the protocol, restart, stop that I won't go into...
It's common for other infections to become a little dormant while treating for lyme, which also happened to me, babs sx are nearly non-existent but my bart symptoms started to flare at the beginning of the year. I went back on the A-Bart, which is when we discovered it was causing the GI attacks. My LLMD started me on IV Vancomycin, which has also helped considerably. I've had the following experiences treating bart with both the A-bart and vanco:
A-Bart
The following are symptoms that popped up or got worse after starting A-Bart - I started with 5 drops once/day and worked up to 30 drops 2x/day:
- gave me bouts of diarrhea alternating with constipation--literally flip-flopped every couple of days
- insomnia - problems going to sleep (I usually crash the minute my head hits the pillow) and significant problems staying asleep (this is likely connected to adrenal imbalances and a cortisol surge in the middle of the night) but bart is notorious for causing insomnia
- increased GI problems - problems digesting food, increased issues with food, and disruptions in moving food through system which in turn causes increased toxin buildup.
- horrific GI attacks where I would start feeling pulsating cramping in my stomach, which then would radiate outward and through my entire torso, front and back... And over the course of a few hours they would get worse and worse and be so painful that I would be crawling to my phone to dial 9-11 but would pass out before I got there... and after about
12 hrs and a lot of dry heaving this would culminate in projectile vomiting a few times - then it would all be over. These attacks would occur every 4-5 wks while on A-bart, and never occurred when I was off A-bart. This was how LLMD and I were able to diagnose the Bell's palsy of the gut.
www.lymenet.de/literatur/vtsherr_gut.htm - I get these strange looking lesions or rashes under my knee and on my R shin along with intermittent bone pain in the same spot, I get the lesions on my lower back and middle of back and on abdomen. They don't its, hey look like tiny raised red/purple bumps in an erratic pattern OR in a nearly perfect oval pattern, they come out of nowhere overnight, stay for a few months then very slowly fade.
- in addition to bone pain on my shin, I get it in my fingers--the take your breath away kind of pain. Thankfully, it's not constant.
Vancomycin
- I noticed IMMEDIATE relaxing of my torso/GI within 15 minutes of my first vanco dose... things would return to normal before my next dose, though (vanco has a half life of 12 hrs, which is why I'm on 12 hr dose frequency) so now that relief is more consistent.
- I slowly ramped up my vanco doses (which occurred over about
6 wks) from 1g every 48 hrs to every 12 hrs
- I think my sleep got a little more consistent and rejuvenated with the higher doses.
- the horrible muscle pain and spasms that were the worst at night also got better after starting vanco (I edited my post to include this one symptom)
- I did flare quite a bit with swollen and painful occipital and cervical lymph nodes all over my head and neck--very swollen neck and extreme exhaustion (couldn't stay awake more than a couple hrs at a time). Red root and time helped bring the swelling down.
- But then I had problems with my port and my nurse hurt her back so I was without my vanco doses for a few days... Also during this time I ran out of my brain detox (which seriously helps keep these sx under control) pinella and bur bur tinctures.
...and POW - I herxed like a crazy person - mostly psycho-neuro mania. This is by far my worst, most miserable, scariest, and unmanageable symptoms.
Over the course of the day, I would be paranoid one hour, the next hour I would be morosely depressed--crying hysterically for no reason, then I'd switch to anxiety, then RAGE, then I'd be fearful... I just cycled through all the emotions known to human kind throughout the day. It's exhausting and scary and really wipes me out.
Once I got back onto the vanco, I felt better and then once I got back onto the pinella and bur bur I got back to "normal". Time and increasing detoxing and just getting more of the treatment under my belt helped.
I've read that bart can be one of the toughest infections to heal and I believe it. I wish I had started treating it first as I think it's been my dominant infection all along. I'm anxious to get past the vanco and try A-Bart again, as for me I think it hits the infection more broadly.
Hope this was helpful. Good luck on your journey and let us know how things evolve for you!
-p
Post Edited (Pirouette) : 6/4/2016 4:48:50 PM (GMT-6)