I was trying to give her what advice I could (be an educated patient and get a good LLMD) and point her to useful info (Dr. B's guidelines, lymenet, etc.), but she is also an insulin dependent diabetic, which I don't know anything about.

Can anyone tell me what impact diabetes has on lyme and treatment?

Thanks,

Is your colleague's Lyme recent, that is, froma recent tick bite? That might make things a little easier...

Otherwise, ti s a very tough combination. The Lyme, the herxes and the meds all affect blood sugars.

Infections thrive w/high blood sugars, and Lyme loves glucose! So, it is all the more important to "control" blood sugars, but at the same time, as I said, teh infection and meds make that control" almost impossible.

The other problem is that yeast also loves glucose. So, with long-term antibiotics, you are guaranteed to have a big problem with yeast.

Another problem is that doctors just don't udnerstand type 1 diabetes (except endocrinologists) and this includes LLMD's. And none of tem seem at all aware fo how meds affect blood sugars.

Finally, it can be a bit lonely, becasue the diabetes support group folks don't know Lyme, and vice-versa.

It's also just generally harder to relax (type 1's have to watch out for lows all the time, fro instance), stressful and people are at a very high risk for depression.

I was worried that this would be a major complicating factor.

From what I understand, my colleague was bitten almost exactly a month ago (mowing her lawn)...the tick was attached for several days. She still has a prominent rash at the site.

I'm concerned about her treatment, too. From what I understand, she initially became ill out of town, and ended up in an ICU. They put her on doxy (not sure if they knew it was lyme) but took her off and gave her prednisone when she herxed badly after several days!

When she got back in town, she did have a doctor diagnose her w/ lyme right away, but he immediately put in a picc line and put her on Rocephin 7 days a week.

That seems very extreme to me. Is that aggressive treatment diabetes related?

I don't want to completely scare her (I already did enough when she found out how long I've been sick, though I emphasized that I didn't catch it early like she did).

But, I'm worried about (1) IV as first line of defense (2) 7 days a week! (I lost my gallbladder on 5 days a week, and I didn't do IV til after two years of orals had failed), (3) no one told her to go on probiotics (4) no one has mentioned coinfections to her.

If you know of any relevant literature I can give her, or any specific advise, I would be very appreciative.

She's pretty freaked out right now. If I can't tell her anything positive (and this combo sounds pretty grim), I'd like to be as helpful as I can.

Thanks again,