My journey. Am I doing the right thing?

6 months ago I moved to Maine right next to the woods.

I’m cautious. I know, when I’m doing fine, but I also recognize whenever “I’m under attack”.
I have had that feeling since the end of April, this year. It all started out with one Tuesday night whenever I got exhausted for no reason. I got chills, stiff neck, and fatigue. I had to go to sleep at 8 and I slept for 16 hours.

The day after I was doing fine. Until the next Tuesday, where exactly the same happened(except for all the sleep). And the Tuesday after that. That was it! Afterwards there was no symptoms, until end of May where I received rashes all over my body. It might have been the Brown Tail Moth because I could touch the mosquito-like rash and afterwards touch my neck and after a couple of hours plenty rashes occurred on my neck. I can still get it from time to time.

Middle of June however, I received slight joint pain in knees and elbows. It wasn’t hurting, but it was a bit annoying. I also received a numbness/tingling in my left arm. That has now occurred three times. Just like the flu-like symptoms. Coincidence? I think not.

Coming from Denmark, ticks were almost never an issue, due to the fact that 2% of all ticks carry the disease. So the first couple of months I had no idea what I was being attacked by. A friend of mine suggested lyme and I immediately started doing my research. It fitted the profil. I made a timeline and went to a third doctor and told him about it. He did the regular unreliable test and put me on doxycycline for 30 days.

I did my research and realized that it was nowhere near enough. So I searched for treatment and without putting too much toxic into my body, I have decided to go with the herbal approach.

I have been on Stephen Buhner’s protocol for one month, with a small struggle of intake, but I’m doing better now.

Symptoms at the moment are small amount of brain fog that comes and go. I do experience minor joint pain in knees and elbows.

My detox method is going to be charcoal from the "New to lyme?" recommendation. My diet is very strict and doesn’t involve alcohol and very small amounts of sugar.

Based on my symptoms I shouldn’t have become chronic.

I have thought about the common coinfections, like bartonella and babesia as well. I’m buying Buhner’s coinfections books as well and considering taking the protocol for them as well to be on the safe side.

I can’t afford a LLMD or testing with IGeneX, so I have no other choice than to take my own approach and educating my self.

Any interventions? Any suggestions? Am I doing the right thing?

Hi Chris12321 and welcome to the forum!

It sounds like you're on the right path....It's hard to say why your Lyme is chronic - but once those buggers get in to you, you never know what the impact will be! It really depends on how your immune system is able to respond and other unknown factors (in my opinion!).

What did you mean when you wrote -- "a small struggle of intake?" Does that mean you had a reaction to the herbs and your symptoms flared? If yes, that's a good indication that you have an infection -and the herbs are targeting the lyme and supporting your immune system, so that's a good thing!

It can take several months or years to clear a Lyme infection, so even with the one month of Doxy and one month of herbs you'll need to keep treating. The Buhner herbs are extremely supportive for your body, so there is no reason not to use them if you suspect an infection. I think it's worth trying Buhner herbs for the co-infections too. At the very least if you have a reaction to them when you start to take them then you know that those co-infections are present.

The rashes you mention could be Bartonella rashes. I've never had them myself though, so I don't know how they present.

Also - great that you're on a healthy diet, and you might consider even adding another detox method. I know it's getting close to fall in Maine - and epsom salt baths can be especially lovely during the colder months.

Hopefully this is helpful and I'm sure that others will have thoughts!

Yea - Japanese Knotweed is one of the core herbs for Lyme. I would suspect since you reacted to it you should keep going with it.

My symptoms came up out of the blue in the middle of the winter. I had no idea what it could possibly be. I was tested for Lyme early on, but my test came back negative. It took me about 7 months to find a functional medicine doctor who also treats Lyme - and that's when I got the positive Lyme disease diagnosis. In retrospect I had been hiking in Austria that December and maybe I picked it up there, but I also had a really traumatic event in my life happen around that time, and I think my immune system just s**t the bed (for lack of a better description). I sometimes think that I've been harboring Lyme for years, and this traumatic incident just put me over the edge.

But those 7 months of waiting for a diagnosis were torture. I was a total wreck - my symptoms would be bad and then flare to even worse every 3 weeks or so.

Oh, and thank you for bumping goshawk!

i looked her up (google) and she definitely is lyme literate - Did a presentation - video-microscopy and pictures of Bb.

Okay - I will be checking my emails in a bit.