How do you know if your lyme is gone (and you are "cured") after treatment. I know several people who took 21 days of doxy after not being able to walk and were fine without any problems after. However, I am reading these posts and see that is not the case for others. After you finish treatment, how do you know if your lyme is gone. Doctors say that the lyme symptoms can last for a month or more after treatment but that the treatment was still effective. How do we know this? How do we know if we need more treatment or not?
Posted by seekhelp (Member # 15067) on :
On Lymenet it's incurable for the most part. Posted by Lymetoo (Member # 743) on :
No REAL way to know.. except by your symptoms and how you feel.
Many will finish off the Lyme treatment with heavy doses of flagyl or tindamax. If you don't herx on that, you're good to go!
You CAN get your life back!! I did!
Posted by sutherngrl (Member # 16270) on :
Most LLMD's will treat several months after you are symptom free. You do not stop treatment while you still have symptoms. That is the way the IDSA does it and that is why so many ppl are suffering.
Posted by sixgoofykids (Member # 11141) on :
As others have said, most Lyme specialists treat until after your symptom free for a time. I believe that if you catch it right away they treat it for six weeks past the last symptom ..... it's in the treatment guidelines at www.ilads.org Posted by ping (Member # 6974) on :
a1 - A case of Lyme can be so individual, not to mention the other infections that usually occur with it, that it's difficult to for many of us to use the "C" word. Certainly, if the infection is caught very early (helps if you have a rash and take a picture as proof) and if you're of a young enough age, there's a good chance that the infection can be quelled.
For many of us here, we were misdiagnosed for many months or years before discovering the truth that TBD's were indeed the culprit(s) of our failing health. The longer the infection goes unmanaged, the deeper into the tissues it burrows, the more damage it does and the more difficult to destroy the microbes. Then, there's the harshness of the treatment(s) (tx's) themselves, which alone can disable a patient, as it is in the beginning of most medical treatments for little known, or less recognized diseases in which the research dollars are not forthcoming quickly enough.
There are a number of people who like to use the "5-year rule". In short, if your completely off tx and symptom (sx) free for 5 years, they declare themselves cured. Although I and a number of my friends used to hold this philosophy, I have to wonder after seeing numerous people, just this year alone, return to this site after having been sx free for 10 and 15 years, only to have sx's return after surgical trauma, or no apparent trauma at all.
Given these circumstances, you shouldn't be disuaded from getting tx. As Lymetoo said, you can recover your life and live it to the fullest.
![[Frown]](frown.gif)