I have been a support group leader for 8 years in Santa CRuz County, California. Orals work for many people, so does IM Bicillin, Intra-muscular Bicillin which is just one shot a week in the buttocks and is cheaper than IV.
Salt/C, herbs, etc have never been proven to help with Lyme and you can hurt yourself. In 8 years as a support group leader I have never once seen a successful full remission of chronic Lyme without longterm antibiotic thrapy. I would recommend a good Lyme doctor.
There is a current double standard of care- IDSA & ILADS. The first recommends limited treatment and calls continued symptoms Post Lyme Syndrome. The second treats until all symptoms are gone. Here is a good article about The Two Standards of Care at ILADS.org, the web site for Lyme doctors.
http://www.ilads.org/insurance.html
I was bedridden with very bad neuro Lyme and am normal now thanks to 9 months of IV Rocepihn years back. It was very $ because it was on patent back then. Now you can get it as cheaply as $412 a month for IV.
But IM is safer and orals too. MANY longterm people do great with IM or orals. Unless you are bad neuro Lyme it is not worth the risk for IV.
I used to have chronic pain and firbomyalgia and I hvaen't had that for 7+ years now which is nice. I hope you get there.
I am trying to get some more people to the Lyme forum here because it is not very active. This has a great set up and it would be nice to have more people there.
If you have Lyme it is VERY common to have the coinfctions Babesiosis, Ehrlichiosis or Bartonella. If those are not treated you will stay symptomatic.
They are treated with diffferent meds than Lyme. I had HME Ehrlichiosis, Babs, Bart & Lyme. Ehrlichiosis is treated with Doxy, Babs with anti-malarials, Bart with quinolines and Lyme with lots of things*)!
So get tested & evaluated- check your records and see if your doctor tested you for them- if not, that is a good indicator right there as to your doctors knowledge of TBDs- and be aware that all can be blood negative. Ehrlichiosis was shown to be blood negative in 2 of 4 fatal, acute cases as seen in this pubmed abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...ubmed_RVDocSum
QUOTE:Evidence of E. chaffeensis via IHC, ISH, and PCR was documented in all 4 cases. Abundant immunostaining and in situ nucleic acid hybridization were observed in spleen and lymph node from all 4 patients.
Significantly, in 2 of these patients, serologic evidence of infection was
absent.
UNQUOTE
Congratulations on your diagnosis*)!*)!! It is GREAT news*)!
It means you can get better or even full remission*)!
It is nice not to be in pain*)!
I was so impaired I never believed I would be like normal again.
Yet it happens all the time!
Sincerely,
Sarah