He was on quinine/clindamycin and quinine biaxin for several months and we saw drastic improvements. Then he started to backslide. He was experiencing fatigue, soreness, nausea.

We figured it was a plateau and he switched to rifampin. Well, the rifampin has been similar to flagyl, he gets so miserable on it that he can't get well established on it. Throw in some other antibiotics for a sinus infection (he paused the rifampin while doing this), and he's been feeling worse and worse.

What is going on is what I'd like to know. We've all had enough of this. It is so hard to go back to sick when you had a taste of well. He was exercising every day and feeling fantastic. Now he's dragging around, has very little energy.

Our plan is to retry the rifampin very slowly, but we are eager for him to feel better (who isn't). After rifampin the doc will try iv clorofan (I think that's what it is). I just want to know if this is all a waste or if we should go back to what was working but do something different with it.

Excerpts:
Serrapeptase is a proteolytic enzyme.
Clinical studies show that serrapeptase induces fibrinolytic, anti-inflammatory and anti-edemic (prevents swelling and fluid retention) activity in a number of tissues.

Besides reducing inflammation, one of serrapeptase's most profound benefits is reduction of pain, due to its ability to block the release of pain-inducing amines from inflamed tissues.

Serrapeptase has been shown in clinical studies to benefit chronic sinusitis sufferers.

A powerful agent by itself, serrapeptase teamed with antibiotics delivers increased concentrations of the antimicrobial agent to the site of the infection.

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Another supplement you may be interested in reading about is cat's claw. The two main brands to look for are Samento and Saventaro.

Samento library http://www.samento.com.ec/sciencelib/sammain.html

Saventaro
http://store.yahoo.com/iherb/saventaro.html

Rifampin is a tough drug to handle. I couldn't handle it myself. Have you tried backing off the dosage?

Hoping others will chime in here!

I think it is the babs that could still be causing your husband problems as well.

He's now doing mepron/ketek again, with tinidazole for the protozoal tissue form (I believe) as well as for Bb, and bicillin. Recovering well, but not nearly up to par with the 2 months of feeling good. Both tinidazole and mepron seem to cause horrendous fatigue.

The lesson for us was -- babs is very recalcitrant, and does enormous damage. I now think that much of what we thought was Bb was babs. We're pretty sure the bart has not come back.

Have no experience with Rifampin; other options for bart that I know of are the quinolones (scary, but worked for the hubby), and gentomycin (also a little scary).

We found flagyl very hard to deal with, too. Tinidazole has been easier, but the fatigue it causes is still crushing for both of us.

Our LLMD says he hasn't had much luck with the quinine/clinda combo for babs, but I know some folks here think they kicked it with that. Several months doesn't seem enough for babs on this combo, though.

As far as backsliding while actually on the babs meds -- I dunno. Could be so many things, including a flare (since he was doing so much more physical activity), resistance, massive die off, reaction to the meds themselves...So frustrating and disheartening!

Our experience of such backsliding has been that the coinfections were insufficiently treated, and came roaring back, often re-awakening the Lyme sx. Detox (especially liver and colon), the steam sauna, and step-by-step re-treatment have been successful for us (in so far as we are successful -- we're much better than we were, and we were about as sick as you can be. We're not well yet, but much much more functional. We've been working with our current LLMD for a year).

One other possibility is, as always, yeast. We found that it was a big factor in previous episodes of nausea, fatigue, and mental weirdness.

Please let your hubby know that we've fallen into that dreadful relapse hole ourselves, and deeply sympathize. Recovery is definitely possible. And I'm sending a hug for you too -- so hard to watch someone go through this. And so frightening to revisit the vast and unmapped landscape of severe illness.

I'm very interested in the serrapeptase -- thanks for the link, C-in-P.