Treatment Reacap: Month 7

Well, the good thing couldn’t last forever. I’m not going to lie, month 7 was rough. My doc and I had added some biofilm busters to the mix, and she’s convinced that digging up those bad boys was part of the problem this month. It may also be that one of those biofilm busters, NAC, wasn’t a good mix for my genetics – just one of the many epiphanies uncovered during my consultation with Bob Miller from Tree of Life.  It’s also possible that I’m just due for a med change, having been on the same basic antibiotic combo for over 3 months now. So we’re going to shake things up again for month 8. But before we talk about what’s next, let’s do the symptom lists.

Things I saw more of in month 7 included:

• Frequently pressured right ear – not enough to actually plug it, but enough to notice discomfort
• Jaw pain on right side
• Headaches / stiff neck / tight traps on right side
• Ringing ears – even a few days of it getting louder 😦
• LOTS of muscle pain, especially in glutes and hamstrings, again on right side
• EXTREME sciatic nerve pain (after a cranisacral adjustment for the muscle pain) on right side
• General anxiety – only lasted a few days, but this isn’t one I like to have back
• One panic attack
• Night sweats during my cycle
• Constant underarm sweating all month, worse on right side
• Joint pain in elbows, wrists and ankle – much worse on right side
• Poor sleep – not tired at night, waking up a few hours early most nights
• Increased bruising on legs
• Episodic sharp pain on upper front and back ribs which made breathing painful; lasted maybe 30 min at a time

Things I had less of in month 7:

• The dizziness and vertigo I experienced in month 6 dissipated.
• My flaking eyelids have been well behaved
• I have had NO foot pain in month 7, which is a first for me!
• Vision problems will be harder for me to track now that I have awesome new glasses 🙂
• Nightmares – when I did sleep, I seemed to mostly have just normal human dreams

My doc never lets a backslide like this go unanswered, so my treatment is about to get a major overhaul. This month I will be doing the following:

• Quitting cefdinir, Bactrim DS and Flagyl
• Working up to 600mg of Rifampin 2x a day
• Staying on Doxy 200mg 2x a day
• Pulsing biofilm busters every other week
• Adding in the supplements prescribed to me by Bob Miller (my Lyme doc reviewed his notes and okayed all of his additions; love when everyone plays nice together!)

My doc had wanted me to go on Lavequin which, like Cipro, is in the fluoroquinolones antibiotic family. I’m sure I went sheet white. This is the family of medications that everyone on the Lyme boards warns you about. It can cause rather severe tendonitis, even tendon breakage or nerve damage after even a very short course. Yiiiiiikes. Honestly, I hope I could avoid ever being on it, but my doctor was stern – saying that if I really want to get well, I *will* need to take this medication at some point. But she gave me some time to do my research, which I appreciate. And for now, we’ll do rifampin at high doses. Bartonella bad guys are about to get a run for their money!

It’ll take me a few weeks to get into the full protocol here. I want to start with some lower doses of the rifampin along with the new supplements, then add biofilm busters and stair step up to a higher dose of rifampin. It might be a rough several weeks. But I’ve got my herx toolkit ready!! Let’s kill some bugs!c