Proper Prescription

I'm in NJ and my first visit with an LLMD cost me $350. $1500 just seems really really high to me but who knows. My doc was going to prescribe me zithro I believe it was 250mg twice a day but with no insurance it would cost about $400 a month. She switched me to amoxicillin 4500mg per day and it cost me $30 a month. I'm sure there are people on this board with much more knowledge on the rx's than me. I might just suggest you add a cyst buster to the mix to break open the cyst form of Lyme.

$1500 is high. There are only a handful of LLMD's that would charge that for the first appointment. Your combo is actually fairly good IMO. I know a lot of people that love Banderol. Banderol and artemisinin especially are strong ones.

For Lyme, zithromax goes after the cell wall deficient form. It also helps with Babesia (as does artemisinin). Is this a brand new case or have you been sick for a while? If you have been sick for a while, it is pretty unlikely that ANY combo is going to work in a short amount of time unfortunately. You will likely have to switch combos many times and be on herbs/meds for a while. Do you think your ND will be willing to stick with long-term treatment and switch meds around? If so, I would stick with him/her. You could do a lot of research on your own and figure out some different protocols to try. IMO the first protocol that was chosen is a fairly good one. It sounds like whoever prescribed that at least has some knowledge of chronic Lyme.

If you do all antibiotics, for Lyme alone it's usually good to have a macrolide (zith or biaxin) with something for spirochetes (usually doxy) and then add a cyst buster (tindamax, flagyl or plaquenil) when you are strong enough.

I hope your visit with the infectious disease doctor goes well, but in my experience, they are of no help at all. Unless you have a fully positive (by CDC standards) test from a non-specialty lab (very hard to get) and a documented EM rash, you are unlikely to get any treatment from them. Even with a positive test/EM rash the treatment they will likely give you is 2-4 weeks of doxy alone 200mg per day. That's usually not strong enough and there is research that shows it converts Lyme into the cystic form at an increase of 200%. After that, if doxy doesn't work, you are on your own most of the time and they jump to other subjective diagnosis' like stress, psychological disorders, fibromyalgia, depression and chronic fatigue. I would avoid an ID doctor, but that's just my opinion.

Good luck with your treatment. I hope you start to feel better soon :).

Hang in there, It's a bio!
56 pills isn't much for most of us! I take more than that in one day!! LOL!

Are you detoxing? You really need to detox to help your body get rid of all of those toxins that are being created as the Lyme bacteria are being killed and the toxins that the bacteria creates on it's own. Most people with tick-borne infections have compromised detox pathways in their body, so we have to help the body remember how to detox. There is a really great post in the "New to Lyme?" thread that stays at the top of the forum. Please read through that and follow those instructions.

I would agree with Summer about the ID doc though - very, very few ID doc's even admit there is such a thing as chronic Lyme and believe that 6 -8 weeks of abx is almost always enough to cure Lyme - definitely NOT the case!! The ID doc wanting you to have another WB, is suspicious as well. It makes me believe that they have their "favorite" lab that returns the kind of test results they like best - which would be overwhelmingly a lot of negative test results, as they believe that Lyme Disease is still a rare occurrence.

You could call the ID doc's office and ask them what the doc believes - if Lyme is rare, and what is the standard treatment time that the doc believes is good. That should tell you a lot!!