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Lyme is curable isn't it?
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It seems to be a fairly controversial topic, so I'll go off of what I've read that's most reputable. From what I gather, if caught in the most early stages and treated immediately, it's curable. What I've been reading (only on page 22 out of 188), this doctor suggests doing repeat CD 57 tests as well as something else and documenting changes (the treating provider does this). If the numbers don't do the right thing (go up or down, I forgot, hehe) - it gives them a better idea of if the patient will 'relapse' or not. They seem to talk about it like it were cancer in a way, as in you have it and it goes into a remission of sorts and in some cases (it hints more towards long term infections ("chronic lyme") and things of the like) there's changes of a relapse.
They seem to prefer to call it treatable instead of curable.
Here's some clips from Tom Grier's writings, these are from studies (link to full article below)
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At the 1993 LDF Conference, a study was presented by Dr. Daniel Cameron, MD. In his study of more than 40 nursing home patients, he found that the relapse rate for IV Rocephin for four weeks was 25%, but the relapse rate for doxycycline was 87%. The difference in this study was that the follow up was 13 months not three months.
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In a six year, ongoing study using the population of Nantucket Island, there was an interesting statistic that occurred involving the use of IV Rocephin. Since the entire population of 5000+ on the island went to only four doctors, it was easy to do long term followups on patients who were treated for Lyme disease. What was found was IV Rocephin had the highest rate of relapse, unless followed up for several moths with oral antibiotics. This was because the short duration of four weeks of treatment was inadequate to prevent relapse. This was why 57% of these patients had documentable relapses.
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At the 1997 LDF conference, a study was presented using naïve beagles as subjects. In this study, three groups of six beagles were studied. One group of six was infected; using infected ticks, and treated with four weeks of amoxicillin. Another group was infected and treated with a double dose of doxycycline for four weeks.
The third group was the control. In the doxycycline treated group, at three months post-treatment, it appeared that 100% were cured. But, at two years at autopsy, five of the six (5/6) beagles were shown to have active infection, or complete relapse.
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This is what was most interesting to me:
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A more basic study showing the inadequacy of doxycycline goes back to 1989, in an abstract from Austria. Here, the researcher incubated a live culture of Borrelia burgdorferi with doxycycline for two weeks. The culture appeared to be dead, as both motility and reproduction had ceased. The culture did not have the appearance, however, of the amoxicillin treated culture, which was filled with Lysed cells. So, using micropore filters, the researcher filtered doxycycline treated cultures, and separated the intact Borrelia from the supernatant. He then washed them, and placed the filtrate back into fresh culture media. Over two thirds of the cultures reactivated, becoming motile and beginning to reproduce. It appeared that doxycycline immobilized the bacteria by interrupting protein syntheses and metabolism. This pushed the cells into a non-metabolic state. Since the doubling rate is often used as a means of determining if the cells are alive, it was assumed that the cultures were dead, when they were in fact just dormant.
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Link to full article here:
http://www.canlyme.com/tom.html
(Most of it is easy to read, by the way. He's kind enough to not throw huge medical words around, lol)
So I really don't know if it's curable, but I don't think 'they' know either!
In my opinion, it's all based off of the individual and I'm sure the strength of your immune system comes into play.
In my case, they think it was a reinfection or long-term infection even though I displayed the EM rash in July after going back home to visit. Kind of funny I grew up there picking ticks off of me and move to California and go home and my first day back I get bit! They've found my symptoms to be too progressive for early treatment, either that or my immune system is too pathetic to handle anything. It only took 4 weeks for chronic joint swelling (I mean it's gross they get so big), muscle pain and cramps, etc. Unfortunately it seems to have bullied the neurological side of things that was already not the greatest in the first place.
In a way, it's humbling. I am almost ashamed for what I complained about before because waking up afraid of my day is the worst experience ever. I've found having a schedule is the best way to do it. I know I have until around 3:00pm before what they call "midday fatigue" kicks in. I have until 6:00pm until my feet and knees swell up. I've turned into a morning person, and I totally hate mornings. The only perk of the morning is my coffee smells AMAZING when I first make a pot!!!
I might get the IV antibiotics next week. It's gross but I'm actually excited, I am so sick of taking pills I'd prefer to have a 'tap' put in my arm.