Hi Kimikos,
Welcome to the forum! I'm so glad that you decided to give us a try! What better than to have more people going through the same things as you to learn from? The wider circle you have, the better the information will be!
I'm glad to hear that you are in treatment already and have health insurance now as well! So many of us don't for a number of reasons.
If you haven't yet, please do take the time to read through our "New to Lyme? Start Here!" thread as it has a ton of very important information, links, symptom lists and instructions for detoxing while one has these infections. It's incredibly important to detox if not every day, then several times a week as it's the toxins that drive our symptoms. (
www.encognitive.com/node/5768www.lyme-disease-research-database.com/coping_with_a_herx.htmlwhatislyme.com/biotoxin-illness-and-detoxing/#comment-2901)
The CDC isn't the best place to be getting information about
the tick-borne infections, as they are "in bed" with the IDSA and they deny the existence of Chronic Lyme and believe Lyme is hard to catch and easy to treat with only 2 - 4 weeks of abx. You best bet to get as up-to-date info as possible is to check with the Lyme organizations, such as the Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center (one of the links in purple above), Lyme Disease.org (
lymedisease.org/, ILADS -International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (
www.ilads.org/), or CanLyme (
canlyme.com/).
No matter what approach you use, you will be in treatment for a while since you waited over a year after known exposure to get treatment. Your infections have gone into the chronic stage now, so more treatment will be required in order to prevent relapses. So you will have to bite the bullet and stick to your treatments.
Just about
everyone of us here has had to change our entire lifestyle in order to be able to successfully treat our infections - that's the only way to overcome the damage that has been done. It's a change for the better though, as we are feeding our bodies the things that it actually needs in order to operate properly - otherwise we would just be struggling along without making much progress.
I would suggest that you also get a pill organizer to help you keep everything straight. If you want to heal, you will have to realize that you are ill, quite ill and take all the meds that you are being asked to take when they need to be taken. These infections will only get worse and worse each time they come back if you don't stick to the protocols.
I don't mean to sound so doom and gloom, but these are
very serious infections! They have almost taken my life, and many others here have gone through the same type of things! You can't be too serious about
these infections. So please, as much of a pain in the rear as it is to do all of these things, I don't think you will find a member here that would say that it's no big deal and you can just do kind of whatever you want when treating these infections. It really does take a lifestyle change.
There are quite a few of us that are using those herbs - and others- and have had very good results with them! So if your doc wants you on them, please be sure to use them! I would suggest that - as WWJD has said - you take it very slowly when starting on each of those herbs, and be sure to only start one at a time so that if you begin to have problems you will know which one is causing it.
We are here to help you learn about
these diseases, and how to get through treatments, to answer questions and to hear you out when you need to vent!