After becoming a new person around April, 2009, I remained this new person, adding strengths and losing symptoms until this February. By January, for instance, I was able to walk 4 miles, was making great progress weight-training, and was almost symptom-free of neuropathy. I say almost, because not all nerves normalized as I'd like, and there were still GI issues. But basically, my feet and hands felt normal, my tongue--which had plagued me--and my balance was quite normal.

Then I started getting tired at night, earlier, and with more of a melt-down sort of feeling. This has gradually worsened, and I am now in a melt-down sort of state way too much. My doctor has stopped antibiotics for a month's vacation from them, and put me on diflucan for a month, for any yeast which have overgrown. So during this month off, I'm just relying on my supplements and old support strategies to get by. It's quite disheartening. It seems there's no real data on how to proceed with such long-term lyme, so a vacation from drugs is just as good as switching at this point, minus the toxicty. There is nothing used for chronic lyme which does not have some neurotoxic issues: Cipro, flagyl, and such. That's a problem. We were hoping that my nerves were going to be healed enough to be able to gingerly try one of these drugs, in the hopes of knocking out the cyst-form of lyme which lives inside the nerve cells.

Things are still not as bad as before treatment. My balance is okay, and my stamina is generally better. But it's not great. I'm quite tired, and, for instance, today, a gorgeous Saturday, I just went back to bed int he afternoon for a 3 hour nap, after 10 hours sleep last night. I'm not feeling up to going out very much, and hanging out in the house, "nesting", feels about right.

It's discouraging. My doctor tells me, as do others, that I was the most dramatic "cure" they'd seen, so this is not unexpected to them. Apparently, things are rocky on the road back from lyme.

I still highly recommend that anyone with the diagnosis of idiopathic lyme get their blood sent to Igenex. You can arrange it directly with the lab, without your own doctor wanting it, I believe. They are quite helpful. It's a great lab, and no way does everybody come back positive. That's just a lie. They're very accurate.

Oh, it's the co-infections with lyme that are the real problem. Seems a tick that is infected with lyme is BOUND to be infected with other illnesses. So I'm infected with ehrlichiosis and bartonella in addition to lyme. That makes it all harder.