My wife and Lyme

My wife and I are traditional Middle Americans. She has been through the medical system over the past 5+years diagnosed with multiple ailments, none of which she believed was true. All symptoms seem to point to an autoimmune problem but nothing seem to fit. We have seen the top doctors but went outside our normal medical plan to an MD that we pay directly. He has been practicing as an internist for 40+ years is very professional and I have not found anyone to say anything other than he is a good doctor. After the first consultation he suspected Lyme which he says he has successfully treated in others. He describes himself as a "non traditional" doctor. He likes to determine the root cause of medical issues and uses an MSA machine to help with diagnosis. He believes that the machine is able to determine more accurately if a person is infected with borrelia and other coinfections. My question... My wife is supposed to be infected with borrelia, babesia and one other co infection. In July she began a treatment for the borrelia and her symptoms were getting better, especially pain and stiffness. In October he thought it would be a good time to go after the babesia and we were told at the beginning he could only treat one at a time with antibiotics. The babesia regimen must be followed for 120 days in order to get it out of the red blood cells and spleen. We are on day 52 of 120 and many of the terrible symptoms have returned now she is not taking the antibiotics for borrelia.. She has not had any lab work confirming the diagnosis of babesiosis but it does make sense she has it. Does any of this make sense to anyone else? Should we insist on proof she has babesiosis? Does anyone else ever get second opinions?

Hi Badlymetoo.
Welcome to our forum! I'm really sorry to hear about your wife being so ill. We all have struggled a lot with regards to finding doctors and treatments that will work for us. These diseases use our body weaknesses against us, so it requires different treatments for each of us.

So do I understand correctly that your wife's Lyme (borrelia) symptoms are flaring now that she's almost 1/2 way through her Babesia treatment? If this is the case, it's not surprising to be honest. Lyme can't be cleared until Babesia and Bartonella have been treated and resolved. Dr. James Schaller's site is a good one for in depth reading on Babesia and Bartonella infections and their treatments - www.personalconsult.com/

If you haven't already, it would be helpful for you to start with reading through the thread at the top of the forum titled,"New to Lyme?...Start here!!", as it is packed full of important information, symptom lists, helpful links and pdf's, and a post on how to detox when one has these infections.

I'm not as 'up' on which abx are used for which infections or how they may or may not interact with each other (& I'm having a rough day myself), but others here are and I'm sure they will be along shortly to help you understand better. I do know that with my herbal approach, my doc told me that the herbs I was to take for my Babesia treatment couldn't be combined with any other treatments though.

The blood tests for these infections leave soo very much to be desired! For Lyme disease, they rely on the immune system reaction when it's well known that Lyme suppresses the immune system, they only test for 4 or 5 of the 100 possible strains in the US alone - Babesia has over 20 strains and only 2 or 3 of them are tested for and the other infections don't have any better testing either! So I wouldn't ever encourage anyone to rely on testing for any reliable information at this point in time.

Please do be sure that she is detoxing, as this is so important. Lots of times Lyme disease messes up the body's detoxing abilities, so we can't effectively detox normal everyday toxins, much less the toxins from these bacteria as they die. It's these toxins that drive our symptoms, so if we can detox effectively enough, we don't have serious symptoms.

Other things that should be checked out is her hormone levels- not just estrogen/progesterone, but other hormones as well like thyroid & adrenal too. Lots of us have issues with either high or low thyroid, and uneven cortisol levels from our adrenals which are struggling or shot.

Does she have any viruses that are stopping/slowing her progress? Many here have issues with things like Epstein-Barr Virus, cytomegalovirus, as well as herpes simplex virus. If the immune system in overloaded trying to handle all of these things as well as tick-borne infections, it can really struggle just to keep going.

You do need to feel confident in your doctor though. So if you and your wife don't feel very confident in your doctor for any real reason, please do find one that you can have confidence in.

Should you decide you want to just get a second opinion, please do be sure to use another LLMD.