How to know if lyme cleared and only co-infections remain?

Hi all - is there any way (clinically and based on speculation alone - when the time is right i will get retested) to know if the lyme is gone and only co-infections remain? Babesia and bartonella specifically. The only reason why I ask is because it seems like certain symptoms have gotten worse or show themselves more now (sore soles of feet, light headedness esp. when standing, fatigue, low grade fevers) while some have gotten better or almost resolved (headache). I have been treating with only ceftriaxone for about three months because I couldn't tolerate other meds with gut issues etc. (including herbs). LMK Thx!

That's encouraging to hear that you have zero positive bands! What's the WB abbreviation?

WB - Western blot

That is the situation I believe I have been in for the past 2.5 years - Lyme cleared and remaining issues due to co-infections (or whatever other bodily dysfunctions).

I'm not sure how applicable this is to your situation, but for me, Lyme had a very distinct onset - I felt like I was living behind a gray curtain, never fully awake/alert, migrating muscle and joint pains, overall sense that alarms were going off in my body, something was wrong and I kept getting worse.

After being infected ~4 months, I treated with Buhner herbs for 2.5 months which helped stabilize the decline, and then had a month's worth of amoxicillin which seems to have finished the job. about 2-3 weeks into the amox, the gray curtain lifted and then disappeared, I started having times when I felt fully awake/clear (but still had ups and downs to to coinfections/whatever), and the pains that remained were more localized and predictable. Even when I've taken breaks from all forms of treatment, the gray curtain and overall global decline never came back, which has led me to believe Lyme was gone for good. I am pretty lucky, though, in that I figured out what was going on within a few months and was able to get treated before being sick for years, as Lyme appears to be more difficult to treat the longer you've been sick.

Just thought I'd share my experience in case it helps at all. But of course it can be really hard to know anything for sure with Lyme & Co.

Post Edited (1yrinVA) : 12/5/2020 11:21:22 AM (GMT-7)

there is currently no test that can determine if Lyme has been cured.
It's purely a clinical assessment at this point based on symptoms.

western blots will be variable in the same individual over time as a matter of course as a product of the unusual behavior of the Lyme organism and its ability to change its outer surface proteins to evade detection by the immune system.

in addition - some individuals never produce detectable antibodies by western blot or ELISA ( around 20% according to the published studies)

It's not known if all chronic patients experience periods of testing seronegative and seropositive - but a sampling of accounts on here would certainly suggest it's a pretty common occurance.

you could make a case that IgM positive results are more indicative of ongoing active infection and IgG is more indicative of a past infection -as is often quoted for other more conventional infectious organisms - but as Lyme is known to interact with the host immune system in unusual ways i'm not sure that is a safe assumption.

perhaps if you had a history of many positive bands on a western blot in both the IgM and IgG panels - and over time this transitioned to consistently only IgG bands
AND antibody titers also declined steadily along with the clinical symptom picture, you might start to think that on the balance of probabilities it's probably gone.
but i don't think you could rule out that some of the tough little buggers are hunkered down somewhere where there is little or no blood flow and could re-emerge again at some point.

but in the end, what matters is quality of life - most healthy people are walking around with some live viruses, pathogenic bacteria etc living in them - if your immune system has them in check and you function well that's the important thing.

regarding are co-infections likely the cause - another tricky one - LLMDs will try to use a combination of clinical signs, test results and experience to try to guess which thing is hurting you most - and if you plateau and Lyme treatment doesn't seem to be helping any more - then it makes sense to try something specific to the likely co-infections based on symptoms.