Hi Dancing Bear, my response to your question on my lyme success story thread is long overdue. My apologies - I figured I would write it up on here since it is a more recent thread.
Although I haven't been as active as I would like to be on the forum, I have been very busy with lyme topics off the forum and I have been posting questions since yesterday mainly because I am evaluating my journey. There are some things I still need to understand myself!
One of the hardest truths I had to face when I first discovered I had lyme was that I would probably not be able to eradicate it completely. I just couldn't grasp the concept. I couldn't accept the fact that I would be "sick" for the rest of my life. As far as I was concerned, if there were spirochetes in me, I was not a healthy person. Well, later I found out that isn't the case. Once I was able to face the fact that I had lyme disease, but would be able to put it to sleep or in remission, or heal from it, however you want to term it, I calmed down. Our bodies have more bacteria than cells, so when you look at it that way, it doesn't seem all that bad.
I like to use the chicken pox scenerio. It is a great example, or comparison rather, to lyme disease in the way that it remains in our bodies. Once you get the chicken pox (varicella), the virus remains in your system, and if you become stressed later in life, beyond what your body can handle, the virus can then resurface as shingles. But this of course is not a given, since not everyone who gets the chicken pox automatically gets shingles later in life - only those who are "immunocompromised" at the time. It's the same with lyme - once you get lyme in the disseminated stage, the spirochetes are always going to be there.......Once you put it into remission, it can always resurface, but it doesnt mean it will. Some of the members on here have been healed and then reinfected - but never saw a tick or a bite, so were they actually reinfected or did lyme just resurface because their immune system was weak?
So, how did I know I was healed? I wasn't 100% sure of course, but my Dr was pretty confident that I was, based on her experience. There were a few things that clued us in -
My body temp was normal, my compliment C4A level was normal (this is a huge factor - it represents the inflammation level of the body, and it tends to be very high in lyme patients), (my cd57 was still low, but that didn't concern her bc apparently it isn't a very reliable marker), I started gaining weight again, I no longer felt sick, and the biggest reason was, I could no longer handle the treatment. I was takiing AL complex like it was nothing all of those months. And then in sept when i was close to endiing treatment, I was getting severe heart palpitations just from a few drops. There comes a point - in which dancingbear mentioned, when you treat beyond the time that you need to and the meds and herbs become toxic rather than helpful to the body's recovery. This is where it gets tricky. Because I only had symptoms that COULD represent leftover inflammation (shoulder pain, muscle twitches and occasional tingling), rather than treat me for too long, my Dr chose to take the safe route. And she did say, with complete confidence, that she believed my immune system would take care of the rest. So what happened, I stopped treatment in Sept and had gotten pregnant and had a miscarriage in January. I was Super drained, and my body went thru hell bc of it..But when I recovered from the miscarriage, none of the lyme symptoms returned. This was a huge clue in that my immune system was doing it's job, bc if lyme would resurface, it would have at the time of my miscarriage.
I do have some more to my story, but I will have to save it for another day - I will keep watch on this thread, and answer any questions anyone may have. Thanks!~!
Post Edited (Chapelle) : 11/12/2015 9:55:29 AM (GMT-7)