Posted 9/21/2023 11:10 AM (GMT 0)
generally these are slow growing infections
even the fastest of them do not do much growing in a few days
some antibiotics - esp macrolides and tetracyclines have some anti-inflammatory effects - so its possible that as these start to come out of your system you could experience an uptick in symptoms in the short term.
the other strong possibility is that a natural fear of things becoming worse when you are not actively treating ( especially compounded by the heightened anxiety almost all bartonella patients experience) will cause your mind to focus on and amplify anything that might indicate this fear is becoming a reality. we humans like to feel bias is something that affects other people, and that we have a good handle on how tings really are, but the truth is - its very hard for us to be truly objective about this.
i track my objective symptoms and capabilities daily and plot them in a chart so i can see objective trends to avoid this issue - and help guide my self treatment - i highly recommend anyone self treating on their own ( ie without the benefit of a good LLMD ) to do the same.
either way - lyme and co treatment is a long term project - 1-3years for most chronic sufferers.
(there was a recent paper discussed here that documented 20+ months median treatment duration for lyme and co infections in the severely ill - Rainy posted it i think)
during this course - there may be ups and downs from day to day and week to week - or even month to month - but what really matters is the trajectory over the long term.
breaks of a few days - or even a few week are unlikely to derail the long term prognosis
in fact many LLMDs use pulsing regimes that have 9 days breaks ( Dr J ) or 2 week breaks ( Dr SP ) as a matter of course.
Dr J also advocates longer breaks as needed during treatment to allow patients to get over herxes and function better - he has a youtube video up on his channel about this that you ma want to watch
all the best