Negative last year, Positive this year

So I tested negative for Lyme and positive for Bartonella last year. Started treating Bart with DesBio this year....and my Bartonella numbers have gone down from .74 to .19. HOWEVER, I am not positive for 2 Lyme bands this year...and was only positive for 1 last year?

Is this normal?

Antibody tests aren’t very useful for gauging progress with trestment.

Lots of false negatives

skinny_joe said...
Its hard to draw a conclusion on antibodies tests. Your antibody levels vary from week to week month to month.

I had someone in another forum tell me that an increase in bands is my immune system mounting a response to Lyme, which is a good thing. However my NP told me the additional band is a "concern" and that if I don't start this treatment (which costs over 5k) I run the risk of paralysis.

Such wildly different views is just confusing. I will say this, the support and guidance I have gotten in forums like these...from actual patients...has always led me down the path of progress. But because I am not a doctor, my natural inclination is to listen to my doctor. My NP said that if I let her treat me...she can 99% guarantee me to get rid of Lyme forever. So I am torn!

I would suggest a new doctor if none are available tread carefully.

“ However my NP told me the additional band is a "concern" and that if I don't start this treatment (which costs over 5k) I run the risk of paralysis.“

She’s full of crap.

An additional band showing up on a western blot doesn’t change the severity of your infection!!!!

Drop that practitioner - she doesn’t even know the basics

“My NP said that if I let her treat me...she can 99% guarantee me to get rid of Lyme forever.”

- 100% WRONG. There is NO GUARANTEE that ANY TREATMENT ON THIS PLANET can get rid of Lyme disease forever. It’s all about beating back the infection, helping your immune system regain the upper hand, repairing dysfunction in the body so the body can operate effectively the way God made it to.

”However my NP told me the additional band is a "concern" and that if I don't start this treatment (which costs over 5k) I run the risk of paralysis.”

- My first reaction to this was RUN for your life and take your money with you!!!

However, I don’t know what your current symptoms and state of health are. If you have had progressive loss of mobility, increasing numbness or paralysis symptoms already, then the NP may be saying if you don’t treat Lyme/co at all then you risk paralysis or continuing to decline. That would be a reasonable statement.

That does not mean you have to treat with this NP using their protocols, products, or procedures. There is no one size fits all treatment plan for anyone with Lyme. The reason is because we are all individual and the patients’ entire being and history is involved - variety of infections, environmental exposures and toxicity, genetics and genomics, mental and emotional and spiritual health, etc.

“But because I am not a doctor, my natural inclination is to listen to my doctor.”

- I would say most of us had that inclination BEFORE Lyme. It’s very important to take responsibility for our own lives, health, and education. It’s the over-reliance on “authorities” and personal abdication of thinking, researching, questioning, and taking action that has allowed for the current global grab for control over everyone. That should be a sobering reality check for anyone whose eyes and ears are open to the realities around them.