Progress Report: August 2014

Back in March, I started my treatment plan for Lyme disease, Bartonella, and Babesia. The plan was to start by treating the Bartonella (as these symptoms were most severe), then move on to Babesia, and then the actual Lyme disease. This is a common approach that both helps the body adjust and also gives patients faster symptomatic relief.

The recovery process is slow with a lot of ups and downs. Every day I’m balancing the herbs and drugs with possible Herxheimer reactions. My doctor instructed me that if the herxes got too bad, I was to stop taking everything and wait for it to pass before starting up again.

Bartonella Treatment

When I first began the treatment for Bartonella, I got very nauseous. I was on antibiotics for the first four weeks and I would the nausea would start about 30 minutes after I took it. It would last around four hours. I never actually threw up, it was more the feeling that I could at any moment. It was also a whole-body feeling (as opposed to a rumbling in my stomach) where my body was clearly not happy about something.

After switching to herbs, the nausea improved and my other symptoms also decreased. The biggest difference was the disappearance of the horrible cough I had developed over the past few years. I also had more of an appetite. At the beginning of treatment, I had an omnipresent headache, but after about three months that dissipated as well.

Fatigue Treatment

For a while, my biggest complaint was a crushing fatigue. I barely had enough energy to get out of bed and some days could hardly sit up straight. Even though I was feeling less fluish and was thinking clearer, I just didn’t have any energy to do anything. My doctor tried me on more B vitamins and other supplements, but nothing seemed to be able to crack this fatigue.

Upon the advice of an intuitive healer, I decided to add a magnesium supplement to my regimen. Magnesium is incredibly important for the body’s process of creating energy (among other things). Through further reading, I discovered that many people with Lyme disease also have magnesium deficiency.

Unfortunately, I found oral magnesium supplements to be very hard on my digestive system. Even at 200mg a day (50% of the USRDA), I experienced severe gas and cramping that continued for two weeks. I decided I couldn’t deal with it and stopped. I’d try a couple other oral magnesium supplements but would once again stop due to the digestive discomfort. I finally decided to try magnesium oil that is applied to the skin.

Because it’s absorbed through the skin, magnesium oil isn’t supposed to have any negative effects on the digestive system. However, I didn’t find this to be 100% accurate. For the first few days after I started taking it, my digestive system still was acting a bit odd, with some minor gas and cramping. After about five days, that subsided, and I slowly increased to 500mg per day.

Further investigation led me to discover that magnesium is also very important for digestion, and being deficient for a long period of time alters the way digestion happens. Reintroducing magnesium into the body means the digestive system needs to adapt to once again having the correct fuel, and so some digestive discomfort can happen initially even when using the magnesium oil on the skin.

The magnesium did the trick. My energy improved and, as an added bonus, my sleep quality improved as well (magnesium helps to calm the body).

Babesia Treatment

The Babesia protocol was much simper. I started taking Plaquinil once a day and artemisinin three times a day. I did that for a week and felt more or less the same as before. I added in cryptolepis three times a day after that point. Within a day, the herx started.

I had pain in every part of my body, including a massive headache; even my eyes hurt. I got extremely nauseous and my cough, which had dissipated significantly, returned with a violent vengeance. The doctor had warned me that the Babesia symptoms tend to get worse at the beginning of the treatment and that it should subside after three days. She was wrong.

On day four, after barely being able to move or eat the entire time, I decided to stop all of the Babesia protocol to let my body recover. It took about four more days for the pain, nausea, and cough to calm back down. Today I’m on day five and there are still shadows of these symptoms, but they are much improved from earlier in the week.

My plan now is to start again, taking the Plaquinil, artemisinin, and cryptolepis each one time a day for a week to see how I do. Then I’ll slowly increase the dosage week over week until I’m at the full dose. I probably should have done that initially (knowing how sensitive my body is), but when you’ve been sick for as long as I have, the preference is to get things over with as quickly as possible.

Overall Progress

From the beginning of treatment, here are the positive signs I’ve seen:

• I’ve gained about eight pounds. This is huge for me because I haven’t been able to gain weight in years.
• My cough is much better.
• I’m sleeping better than I have in years.
• The random skin conditions I’ve accumulated have started to disappear.

Unfortunately, I’m still not well enough to go into work; some days I’m barely well enough to care for myself. However, I’m still able to work from home periodically throughout the day. I tend to work for an hour or two, then rest for 30-60 minutes. I’ve been able to stay reasonably productive that way, although sometimes I just need to stick to answering email.

Compared to February, when I first went out of work sick, things are much better. At that point in time I was so weak that I could barely talk and getting out of bed was such a massive struggle that I couldn’t do anything else once I got up. These days I’m taking phone meetings a couple times a week.

So there is progress, albeit slow. Some days I need to look back over the list of things that have improved to remind myself that I’m on the correct path. After all, I was getting worse for years, with all symptoms gets gradually more pronounced, and this is the first time symptoms have ever decreased for me. In a world where we’re used to most things resolving in 6-8 weeks, impatience starts to seep in with every passing day.

My patience is being tested all the time, especially when my body suddenly decides it’s done doing anything for the day. Everytime I herx, though, is a reminder that I’m on the correct path. That type of reaction wouldn’t be happening if the bugs weren’t dying off, and I look forward to the day when they’re all gone.