Rash on Ankle and Feet That has Never Happened

I have not been on this forum much recently as things have slowly gotten worse. Chimed in a few times, but getting through a day has ben harder lately. Recently, really gotten worse. Fatigue, more body pain in different areas, sometimes a slight dizziness (which I haven't gotten for years), anxiety in am again, unclear thinking at times.

Last night I developed something I have not experienced in the near 20 years of dealing with Lyme - a strange rash , mainly on my left foot and ankle, and some on the right one. It barely goes up to above the ankle. It's not small blood spots, but it doesn't appear to be like a clear Bartonella streak., though there is some linear form to it in spots. Also, my feet have really been hurting near the toes and balls of my feet.

It started after being on my feet all day yesterday at a track meet. No doubt, I over did it running slowly back and forth to instruct runners all day and was dragging butt butt 6:00 pm.

If I had any idea how to post a picture, I would. My concern is it may be vasculitis. Anyone experience this or have any ideas?

Any chance it's a rash from new sock material, new shoe chemicals, new laundry detergent? Does it hurt, itch, blanch when pressed?

I'm sorry you are not doing well lately, and having a new symptom on top of everything else. New symptoms can be so disheartening.

running wild,

I am having some of those symptoms, too, from toxic mold exposure in the house. I am in a crisis right now because of it.

Did you ever do an ERMI or HERTSMI-2 on your house or have a mycotoxin urine test from Great Plains or Real-time Labs?

WBF - Did your mold symptoms ever let up? I ask because you mention a "crisis mode right now." I know it has been an on going issue for you. I did have HERTSMI-2 done, along with one other test I forget the name of. Nothing real bad showed up. I have been working some in our building by the track where I coach that may have some mold but now a lot of exposure.

https://ibb.co/1drZgXj

It's hard to describe the rash. It looks like some dots that form into lines. I've attached a second phot. It seems to play out like vasculitis. With symptoms getting worse at same time, like the dizziness, pain in different areas of body, it must be related to Lyme or Bartonella. The rash/dots came out of nowhere.

Running Wild
from what i have gathered although people talk about the bart streaks as the hallmark rash with Bartonella - reading more broadly around Lyme, bart and in many LLMDs writings - it seems clear that this is in fact a stereotype.
in reality Bart seems to cause a very wide variety of rashes and not all - maybe only a few - are the stereotypical bart streaks. those streaks are so unusual and singular to bart that they become the thing that everyone mentions - but in fact there are many other skin manifestations. Including: spots, pustules, rashes, proliferation of new moles, hyper pigmentation, hypopigmentation, blisters and all sorts of slow to heal sores.

i have an assortment of red dots evenly distributed over wide areas of my legs, v small blisters in my skin when i have a hot bath, small hard material containing pustules in my skin esp on arms and legs and flanks - that wax and wane with treatment and symptoms flares. my partner also had "Bart toes" that was discussed on a recent thread here that several other confirmed bart infected patients on here also experienced and a LLMD confirmed he had seen in other Bart patients (very much like "COVID toes")

we have no way of knowing what other organisms besides bart can cause similar skin manifestations - but bart would still be high on my list of suspects - esp if you have known or suspected bart infection - or if you have many of the typical bart related symptoms. foot pain, neurological manifestations, anxiety, mood issues, circulation issues, etc etc fatigue was also my most prominent symptom

perhaps try a therapeutic trial of Houttuynia tincture and see if it causes a strong herx reaction as another data point - i would initially get a strong herx reaction from even 1ml 3x a day

What do bart toes look like?

there was a thread recently where i realised its a thing

https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=3578313

how's things DCD?

Garzie said...
there was a thread recently where i realised its a thing

https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=3578313

how's things DCD?

Thanks garzie

It's going ok. Pieces of the puzzle continue to come together. Still buzzing like crazy, non-stop. We decided to test it to see if its autoimmune by doing a high-dose prednisone burst to see if the buzzing would stop. Instead, i developed full-body burning head to toe and increased buzzing.

This finally confirmed to my drs what I had been saying, that it's a sympathetic nervous system response (the prednisone was too stimulating, hence the burning). So there's autoimmunity at play, but it may be being driven by a nervous system that is just broken...a fight-or-flight system that's constantly turned on.

In addition, I've been doin keto for 6m. Still having trouble putting on weight due to malabsorption, I weighed between 160-165 no matter what I do. I finally went on rifaxamin for 2 weeks and gained 7 lbs immediately, suddenly I'm 172. This tells me that my microbiome is not healed, and the SIBO is still there. How is this possible after 6m of eating absolutely perfect with no sugar? I thought on this for a while, and it finally confirmed some of the other things I've been saying. The reason I cant fix my microbiome is because my ANS is still in shambles, as I described above. This confirms to me that the vagus nerve controls the gut, and this is the mechanism by which the microbiome gets altered in people with chronic lyme. When the ANS goes, so goes the microbiome.

This all just tells me that I'm making the right choice by going ot the Spero Clinic. I have hope that I have finally identified the underlying mechanism at play and a proper course of action. Unfortunately I dont leave for Spero until late August, all booked up until then. I will live there for 3 months and do their autonomic retraining program. Kind of lookin forward to getting out of the city and living in a small town tbh.

EDIT: Sorry to hijack your thread RW

Post Edited (dcd2103) : 4/6/2021 4:57:41 AM (GMT-6)

Hey RW.

The Rifxamin has made my stools solid and it also caused me to gain weight. I gain weight every time I take it. This confirms that SIBO is causing malabsorption for me, in my mind at least.

Wrt to bicillin, I have posted about this before, but please order from this place

https://rxcanada4less.com/

They are awesome and the bicillin is like $550 for 10 shots, vs Rite Aid tryin to charge me $2200 for 5 shots. They are awesome perfect reviews and the bicillin shows up at your door in an icebox pretty quickly. Just have to email them a photo of the prescription. I recommended these guys to some people on this board who use them as well now

Post Edited (dcd2103) : 4/6/2021 8:17:09 AM (GMT-6)

dcd - i am also convinced there is an auto-immune component of this lyme / bart thing

everything that helps me first makes everything worse for at least a couple of weeks - even LDN - and i don't think its technically a Herxheimer reaction in the strict sense - more a flare of immune reactions. i have hashimotos so i know auto-immunity is a factor for me.

maybe some people can get though this phase - to the other side where with the agitating agent / infection removed - their system can settle again. maybe in others it gets kind of stuck. very hard to know for sure.
i seem to be marginal - am making progress but very very slowly. still flare when i take more or less anything that kills microbes, add more microbes, feeds existing microbes or increases immune activity.

there is a guy that is regarded at the world leading SIBO researcher - Dr Mark Pimental - he has published papers recently demonstrating that SIBO is due to auto-immune damage to the nerve fibres in the gut that cause dysregulation of the muscles lining the gut and hence disrupting the normal motility in the gut and causing SIBO by stopping the self cleaning peristaltic motion.

good luck with your treatment - i do believe if you keep going and learning and trying things you will get relief.

Agreed garzie, this is what I think as well. The autonomic dysfunction has made it so that my gut cannot heal itself. regardless if i eat perfectly, I'm never in rest-and-digest so my gut never heals.

I'm starting to find that there is a huge link between the ANS and the immune system. The old thinking used to be that autoimmunity damages the ANS, and thats why you see dysfunction of the two of them together. I'm starting to think the causality runs both ways, however, and that the autonomic nervous system/vagus nerve actually regulates inflammation in the body. There was an expierment I read about where a neurosurgeon in NY cut the vagus nerve of a rat, and showed how systemic inflammation in the body went nuts. I could never quite explain why exactly people with PTSD or emotional trauma develop immune diseases, or why dysautonomia and immune dysfunction are so intimately intertwined. I think it may be because the ANS controls the inflammatory/anti-inflammatory switch.

As we discussed, the ANS also controls the stomach/microbiome. So it seems to me that there are 3 pieces of the puzzle. Some people try to heal the immune system to fix the ANS. Others try to heal the gut to fix the immune system/ANS. I've done both, and have made progress, albeit incomplete progress. I'm convinced my ANS is just stuck in fight-or-flight and thats driving the symptoms, the screwed up gut, the inflammation. So I'm going to try taking the 3rd approach, healing the ANS. Hoping Spero Clinic can do this.

Wrt lyme being autoimmune/inflammatory, there's no doubt about it. I think the innate immune system gets stuck in over-drive. Excess neuro-inflammation, which again comes back to ANS over-drive. It begins to over-react to everything. You cant have one without the other. Probably why so many people have found DNRS helpful. The more i learn the more the pieces come together.

Post Edited (dcd2103) : 4/6/2021 12:22:37 PM (GMT-6)

Interseting, study showing that tVNS (transdermal vagus nerve stimulation) lowered inflammatory markers in COVID patients. ANS controls inflammation!!!!! Yet I was criticized as being anti-science when i mentioned this in another thread

https://www.streetinsider.com/dr/news.php?id=18238018