It shouldn't really matter if you tell him or not. A pain clinic is there to manage your symptoms, not fret about your diagnosis. The rheumatologist is there to make those kinds of calls and its no...
It's hard for people to comprehend the depth of this kind of pain until it happens. It's not necessarily the level of pain, which is intense to be sure, but the CONSTANT nature of it that is most...
I was almost grateful for my fasciculations when I was pre-diagnosis, as they were at least something objectively visible that I could demonstrate to doctors. Its hard to be grateful about something...
My LLMD has explained that an actual allergic reaction to medication typically happens within hours and the delayed reactions are probably a herx reaction or a side effect of the medication. Because...
Even if your doctor is following the IDSA guidelines, 10 days at 200mg of doxy is literally the minimum recommended dose for a very recent infection (ie you still have a bullseye rash) with no...
Fibromyalgia is basically a non-diagnosis; it's simply a description of a symptom cluster. If they called it achy all over and tired-itis then no one would respect the diagnosis. There are many...
The muscle twitches are called fasciculations and are generally indicative of some sort of neurological dysfunction. Ditto for the other general skin hypersensitivity you are describing. They are...
I'm sorry if you thought anything I said was personally driven; I didn't mean anything I said as an attack. You were specifically comparing the efficacy of synthetic antibiotics to herbal treatments...
I've never quite understood this either. A nap will almost always do me more harm than good. God help me if I fall asleep riding in the car; I wake up in a state somewhere between flesh-starved...
Something being "natural" does not imply that it is somehow safer than a compound synthesized in a lab. A treatment being around for thousands of years says nothing about its legitimacy or efficacy....
Gee, a mysterious concoction that just happens to be effective against every possible condition... I bet this is even more effective than snake oil. The FDA crushed this product in 2003 because they...
Well it would undoubtedly cost you money, emotional and mental resources, as well as risking side effects. At first I got paranoid about every little ache and pain my wife complained about, thinking...
The Burrascano guidelines (just posted) are the closest to comprehensive, one size fits all instructions you'll get for exercise, but don't let it substitute for your doctors own recommendations. I...
I think the word placebo has a bad connotation, where that shouldn't necessarily. There is a large chunk of wellness that is a result of feeling like you are getting better (whether or not objective...
I don't see how it's possible to track the benefits or side effects when taking that many different substances, especially when many of them have vague benefits that take time to build up. I had a...
I think the most overlooked factor for weight problems in the chronically ill is muscle mass. Muscle burns a ton of calories and losing just a little can have a dramatic impact on your daily calorie...
I spent 3-4 months bouncing around different meds with little to show for it, but 2 weeks after getting my PICC started I just woke up one morning and felt great. It didn't last, but it was the first...
Your symptoms sound like they are perfectly in line with a very early stage lyme infection. If your treatment started soon after your infection (sounds like yours did) and you're only one week into...
Meningitis sounds scary, but it has slightly different implications with a Lyme infection. Lyme bacteria grows comparatively slowly and the resulting inflammation progresses slowly, so you don't get...
The lyme cysts (or round forms) you hear mentioned are on the cellular level; they are too tiny to see without a powerful microscope and not large enough to feel in any circumstances. They live deep...
Your LLMD is putting together these drug combinations for very specific purposes; if you're making your own decisions about what to take and when to take it you're going to compromise the efficacy of...
You have a very good chance of being completely cured by even a short course of doxy if you caught the infection at the 11 day mark. I forget the exact data, but there's some well done large scale...
My neuro symptoms were the most frightening piece of the puzzle, as they had me thinking of all kinds of permanent, disabling conditions. There were about a dozen different symptoms including some...
I've been taking oxycontin ER 20mg pills 2x a day for close to a year now, with occasional (average 30 a month) 5mg ocycodone pills for breakthrough pain. My tolerance is such that I have no side...
If you were diagnosed by a normal doctor, then you most likely have a fully positive blood test and/or an obvious bullseye rash. This puts you well ahead of the curve, as the biggest struggle for...
SelahGrace what research indicated that this would be effective for lyme? I looked into this when I first got diagnosed ~6 months ago, but can't remember seeing even preliminary evidence to support...
I don't understand why they would have you doing re-testing either. Some doctors use the CD57 test periodically during treatment to gauge progress; is that what you have been getting done repeatedly?...
I puked a few times when I first started doxy, I'm assuming that's what you're talking about. The bottle said to take it on an empty stomach... not a good idea. You can't lay down horizontal for like...
I've read dozens of studies that discuss seronegative lyme, but don't think I've seen any that conclusively quantifies an IgG deficiency as a confirmed confounder. I seem to remember seeing very...
My ringing, buzzing and partial hearing loss got worse within the first few weeks of treatment, but has gotten much better over the first few months and now even the ringing isn't as bad as it was...
Its nice to hear this discussion taking place in a public forum in a lengthy format (almost an hour long show) instead of being reduced to soundbites. I've never heard Dr Fallon speak about his work....
There is a very large volume of research that shows a substantial number of people who get infected, never get very sick, never get treated and end up completely healthy. There seems to be general...
I know several people who continue to submit each visit to their insurance even after the initial denial. They say to submit each claim in a new envelope, with the hopes of getting them processed at...
I recently read a book that gives a very succinct, extremely effective summary of how to pursue medical research without getting duped. I already considered myself a very effective scientific...
Most MDs don't mind alternative treatments as long as they are doing no harm or won't conflict with their own treatments you are following. Many of the recommendations that make up something like the...
I also agree that it sounds pretty unlikely to pick up ehrlichia without also getting lyme, but the doxy you have can be useful in a few ways. Any change in symptoms when going on abx is a useful...
A 25mg dose of doxy can't kill lyme bacteria and certainly couldn't cause a massive herx. If she did have a severe reaction soon after that small of a dose it was probably an allergic reaction to the...
Extreme pain was the first and still most common symptom for me. It's generally back and other musculoskeletal pain, but I had general abdominal inflamation and pain for years as well. It was severe...
Well first of all it sounds like the thing you smoked was laced. Could have been dipped in PCP, embalming fluid or both. If you had any kind of underlying chronic infection or psychiatric condition...
The medical community is pretty terrible with lyme + conifections, but unless you have a specific exposure and history that makes lyme very likely (ie symptoms started with a spring/summer flu after...
This was one of the first symptoms that became persistent for me a few years after initial infection. The hands were partially numb, achy, hard to use for long periods of time. My thumb would...
You can read up on some of the conventional wisdom about exercise during treatment and recovery in Dr B's treatment guidelines: http://www.lymenet.org/BurrGuide200810.pdf In short, exercise is a...
I've had my eyes looked at a few times last fall. They were just starting to get bad then; one eye or the other would just go completely fuzzy for a day and the floaters were relatively new then, but...
3 weeks into IV treatment and my eye floaters, which have been really bothersome for a year or so, are suddenly much worse. I can't read for very long, because the swirling storm of dots and...
I'm still amazed at just how good it feels during the brief little windows where symptoms subside. I'll have a few weeks of fluctuations, where I go from bad to not so bad, then suddenly BOOM. I'm on...
This article needs to be seen. This is the model by which proper antibiotic treatment for chronic lyme will eventually be studied. They were able to find live spirochetes in their test subjects after...
Thanks for the responses so far, I've read everything 3-4 times already. I should have mentioned that I'm also on a constant watch for something resembling anaphylactic shock. Histamine shock is...
I've been sick ~12 years, diagnosed and started treatment 4 months ago. I made minimal (though some) progress with orals and added a PICC line with Rocephin to the orals around 10 days ago. There's...
100mg a day probably won't do much. The drug could possibly reach a high enough blood level to slow the growth of new bacteria (bacteriostatic), but won't get high enough to actually kill the ones...
This is always part of a herx reaction for me. Some days I can't be in the same room as a plastic bag opening, others the doorbell feels like a hit from a hammer. I've had good results using...