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Well, just what you're doing is fine.

You can post your story on this thread..under this post. Just hit 'reply'.

Hi, Astronomer! Glad you're here.

If you have any issues here, then you can click on the name of any moderator and find our direct email addresses in our profiles. We're here to help!

Wow! I wasn't expecting so many responses in so short of time. Clearly this is a first class website full of loving, caring folks and I am lucky to have found it. I will take the advice of sandyfeet (congrats on post #1000) and check out "New to Lyme?" Briefly, let me just introduce myself. I am a 59 year old husband, father and grandfather from Erie County Pennsylvania and was just diagnosed a few days ago (June 27). A month ago (May 29) I was hit with chills out of the clear blue sky. The next day I found a rash in front of my left armpit with no tick or bulls eye. A week later I ended up in the hospital for 4 days and they checked everything imaginable. The first lyme test took 4 days and was negative and the second took 12 days and was positive. I'm on 100mg of Doxycycline for 3 weeks that I started taking 4 days ago. I currently have no symptoms but was pretty miserable from May 29 to June 24, with the chills being my worst problem. I will post more after I look around here more. Let me just add that what you folks are doing here is truly an act of love and I am so grateful to have met such an amazing group of folks.

Yes, it's great that you are getting some treatment already and have been diagnosed early! If managed right, you probably can beat this before it turns into a chronic or lifelong issue.

100mg of doxy for 3 weeks is not considered enough to manage acute Lyme. Find a Lyme-literate doctor who will prescribe you stronger dosages for six weeks (or more, if you have symptoms).

To find a doctor who treats Lyme (most do not advertise that they treat Lyme because it can be controversial and risky for them) I usually recommend that people search online for "functional medicine doctor [your city]" or "integrative medicine doctor [your city]" or "holistic doctor [your city]" and then call the places that you find to ask them if they have experience treating Lyme and what their approach is, which testing they recommend, etc. You can search for those terms using a normal search engine (like Google or Duck Duck Go) or you can do the same search on Google Maps to see where the practices are with relation to your location. Also, try Girlie's recommendations for finding an LLMD through her or through this forum. You say you are low-tech, so if you need help with any of this, then please let us know!

Good luck!

welcome - borrelia never travels alone . the fevers are likely rickettsial or babesia which the doxy will do nothing for . on the spirochetes- dr. eva sapi says doxy make 200% more cystic lyme than nothing at all.

Fevers can come with species of borrelia, too. The first thing I had a positive blood test for was borrelia hermsii, which presents a lot like rickettsia, with fevers that are cyclical. But the general point remains, of course, that there are lots of infections involved for most of us. Good luck!

Quin said...

bluelyme said...
welcome - borrelia never travels alone . the fevers are likely rickettsial or babesia which the doxy will do nothing for . on the spirochetes- dr. eva sapi says doxy make 200% more cystic lyme than nothing at all.

Doxycycline is often recommended for rickettsia.
Babesia, like most apicomplexa parasites, contains a prokaryotic endosymbiont which is vulnerable to doxycycline.

maybe doxy in the 90s was used as anti-malarial prophylactically but llmd treatment using pharmaceutical is usually malarone, mepron , quinacrine or iv artemisinin with alinia maybe being new in the ring - ha no pun intended. just informing astronomers of his multiple pathogens we can talk treatment and effectiveness on the babesia thread til were blue in the face , again no pun intended...

I noticed that with bartonella, minocycline would only kill it when it was in the blood. I found that taking valproate or bactrim would cause bart to come out of hiding, and then I could kill it with mino.

I'm not sure if it's the same with babesia. It's not clear if I got babesia. I tested negative for it. I had some symptoms, but bartonella also attacks the red blood cells, so it can be hard to tell the difference. So I don't know if I need to treat babesia or not. My doctor thinks I should take something for babesia, but I'm already on so many meds, I'm not eager to add another.

Hi, Astronomer! I'm glad you are finding this forum helpful. You might get more views if you click "New Topic" next time to start a new thread with a title related to your question.

These are important questions! The answers are basically that what you read on mainstream medical websites about Lyme are based on research that ranges from outdated to highly flawed to nonexistent. And unfortunately the information many doctors have access to is flawed or incomplete as well.

Ticks can transmit illness in very little time, some research points to as little as two hours. An engorged adult tick would be noticeable in some ways, but they do numb you, so you might not feel it. Most Lyme is spread by tiny nymph ticks, the size of the period at the end of this sentence, and many (if not most) go unnoticed. Also, many people who have Lyme (and co-infections) never saw a tick, never had a bullseye rash, and some even contracted the infections from other things that can carry them, such as mites, sand flies, and fleas.

And yes, it's definitely possible to have these infections remain dormant and appear even years later. These are opportunistic infections that will wait until your system is compromised in some way (stress, sprained ankle, poor diet, virus, etc.) so they can get a foothold and begin to reproduce and cause symptoms.

It sounds like you are doubting you have Lyme - is that right? How are you feeling?

Astronomer said...
Could those germs have remained dormant all this time?

Yes, absolutely. This (these) pathogen(s) are stealth by nature/design...

And being dormant is like Borreliosis' go to move, like one of the things it does best, like sense the presence of Doxycycline and make a bunch of cysts...

And just one last thing to commiserate, this anecdote about getting weird chills at the post office, affirms both dormancy and a relapsing-type infection (just to note I have been off of antibiotics quite awhile) just know that neuroborreliosis is a funny (not funny) thing to have to deal with at anytime like randomly at the post office where the clerk probably thinks I'm on something...

So here's my quick post-office story: I went to the post office to send a package. I got strange chills (on a super hot day) to where the clerk asked if I was cold. I could have just said, oh I just get weird chills sometimes which is true. But instead I told him I had been working through the night and was over-tired which was also true. But this sort of immuno-compromised state is where lymencos (tick borne diseases and their common co-infections) rear their ugly heads. So, long story short: I knew it was my neuroborreliosis that was causing the chills, that seem to happen uncannily in times of stress (I've been working feverishly no pun intended to try to generate money for...well life and survival first, and treatment...)

Last thought...Pennsylvania is a tough place but you can get a bunch of things you need cheaply (herbal abx, buhner's protocol, and abx) on Etsy (great for cheap herbs, tinctures) or via online order. And this despite the likelihood that the primary practitioners in your area for the most part will wholesale flat-out dismiss and deny you treatment and/or the dignity of a diagnosis (of neuroborreliosis or encephalomyelitis arguably the same thing)...

Luckily, this forum is one of several great online resources you can use.

Post Edited (borrelioburgdorferii) : 7/4/2019 6:54:47 AM (GMT-6)

Astronomer said...
saraeli, Are you saying that I should start a new topic with each question? Should I start a new topic titled A Rookie's Questions and then ask multiple questions? To answer your other questions, I have had no symptoms for over a week now and I'm NOT doubting that it is Lyme. I am not surprised that a tick doesn't have to be engorged to cause Lyme. Are there ongoing efforts to get the medical community to correct this misinformation? Also, I heard of a doctor that specializes in Lyme who is an hour or so away. Can I post his name here to get information about him or do I need to send a private message to a moderator?

Yes - start a new thread with your new question... so members can see the topic of the thread.
I wouldn’t lump several different questions/topics in one thread.

You can only post the initials and city/state of the LLMD (lyme Literate dr) unless it’s one of the llmd’s who are already well known - ie Dr Horowitz for example (he does appearances on tv and writes books about lyme treatment)

Girlie said...


Anyone know about LLMD JJ in Erie Pennsylvania?

What a strange coincidence. The guy's initials are JJ. He's in Hermitage Pennsylvania.