Lyme/bartonella herx?

Hi, so I have been dealing with bartonella and possibly babesia for a year now. just got officially diagnosed last month for bartonella. When I first went to the doctor it was because I was short of breath all the time. Doctors said it was anxiety, I knew it wasn’t so I kept searching of course. Then started getting other weird signs like brain fog, forgetting everything from thoughts to what I was going to say while in a conversation and extreme fatigue. Anyway, My doctor originally thought it was babesia so I was medicated in the beginning of treatment for just babesia with malarone it definitely helped my shortness of breath and a bit of my brain fog while I was on malarone after a few months of taking the medication he added in krintafel which made me herx like high heart rate. A few months later my doctor told me some of my symptoms represent bartonella and started me on rifabutin. my doctor had me get tested for bartonella and babesia through igenex and galaxy found out I had four strains of bartonella and tested negative for babesia. Doctor said that it could be a false negative as I was herxing and reacting to the treatment. So he had me stop the babesia medication and keep on taking the rifabutin. Well I have been on just rifabutin for now along with other vitamins and been having lower heart rate than usual in the 60s sometimes 50s during sleep it never goes lower than 55 and heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, brain fog, tiredness, and a tightness in my throat/ lymph nodes. I’m wondering if this is from me stopping medication from the babesia which I stopped about a month and half ago and it’s babesia symptom coming back or if it’s possibly just herxing bad from taking rifabutin. I only take one rifabutin a day currently.

I started to take rifabutin along with my malarone when my doctor thought I had bartonella instead of babesia but on his babesia regimen I would of taken rifabutin later on any way but right now I’m only on rifabutin and he will increase the rifabutin as I tolerate it if it’s too much I usually herx bad then he will lower the dose. For the babesia regime he wanted to start with malarone then krintafel then artem then rifabutin along with different vitamins and lumbrokinase to clear the babesia nests. For the bartonella I will get up to four rifabutin daily right now I am only at one daily.

In my experience, malarone does also hit bartonella as well as babesia. It can sometimes be hard to tell if you're herxing from bartonella or babesia. One distinguishing characteristic for me was the distinctive odor associated with bartonella die off, but I was initially quite uncertain as to what exactly the meds were hitting.

That’s my doctor I think he is great is he yours as well?

I went to him originally because he’s my moms endocrinologist I thought I had hashimotos thyroid issue just like my mom at an appointment with him he poked my ear to see if there was babesia in the blood under the microscope he found something so he put me on mepron and I reacted well to treatment. He later found that blood checked through the ear is in accurate because some yeast that is found in the ear so he sent me to get galaxy and igenex testing. He believes that babesia odocoilei is the one that I have but babesia is very resistant and takes about two years to get rid of during a phone call appointment he mentioned that babesia odocoilei is what is causing these symptoms I don’t clearly remember what he said about other babesia strains but I will ask him over email and let you know. I will post images of his protocol for babesia

Your welcome Happy to help just trying to figure out how to post photos or link lol

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That worked! Thank you very much, that was really kind of you to share and helpful. I'm sure you've helped many people by doing that 🙂.

Also, I wanted to let you know that Rifabutin interacts with many drugs. I'm not saying this to make things even more complicated for you but I did feel like you should know.

When I was on Rifampin, which is somewhat similar, it interacted with some medications that I was taking. Making things harder is that the half-life is between 28 to 62 hours. So it's a tough drug to handle.

If you go to this website you can plug in all your medications and it should tell you:

https://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.html

🙂 wishing you all the best.

Nattylev1126
How are you now?

Nattylev1126 that is so good. How many rifabutin a day are you on? Do you take adrenal support? I'm currently treating bart. May have babesia but don't have typical babesia symptoms if I do.

As for adrenal support Im on a few vitamins including a strong multivitamin by life extension,N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine by life extension, fish oil, vitron c, vitamin d and two different probiotics.