But a couple of days ago, I may have started a relaspe. Mental fog, fever, night sweats. It's that darned mental fog that makes me think it's a relapse...it seems so familiar and unique.

As the symptoms are mild at this point, I don't want to jump right into massive quantities of antibiotics because I tend to get bad GI side effects. I see two short-term courses of action...
1. Test for Lyme to be sure I'm treating for the right thing before we bring out the heavy guns.
2. Treat herbally/naturally for a few weeks and monitor my symptoms.

If you feel like it, I would recommend doing a search here - there is a lot of information from previous threads about different labs that test for lyme. No lab is perfect and a bloodtest is really only a very small part of the picture - lyme is a clinical diagnosis....

The Bowen test will find you positive - it finds just about everyone positive. I think they've only ever had two negatives at that lab, or something. (But that's just what I heard, mind, I could be wrong)

That test uses a silver stain to directly stain and photograph spirochetes in the blood - problem is, I dont think they have any way of distinguishing between different kinds of spirochetes. It might not be B. bergdorferi they're finding. (And yes, I know that Dr. Mattman was able to culture bergdorferi out of Bowen positive samples, but the whole thing is still sketchy)

Anyway, whatever is going on, to my mind, a test that finds everyone positive is just as useless as a test that has too many false negatives...

Problem is, in your situation, a Western Blot from IgeneX won't help much either, because it might be showing your old antibody response from your original Lyme exposure. Antibody responses can take from months to years to go away after the infection is gone.

I'd give up on testing (just IMHO) and go by your symptoms. If they start to get bad, you should treat again, either naturally or with ABX.

Good luck

Just my 2c.

Interesting about Bowen, I've posted a couple of times asking about what technique they use. I thought it was a fluorescent antibody they used to tag the antigen. I phoned them and couldn't get an answer.

Do you know what they use for Babs or Ehrlichia?

It would seem that you are right about the silver stain not being specific for Bb. But what other spirochetes might be in the blood? Interesting. Also, since Bb is quite scarce in the blood, do they use a concentration technique? Or does everyone actually have spirochetes in the blood?

pdivi-If I were you I'd make a beeline to any doctor that will give you doxycycline now and then I'd get an appt with an LLMD ASAP and I'd stay on abx until seen by the LLMD. Just what I'd do, I am not a doctor and this is not medical advise.

Testing, hmmm... The IgM part of a Western Blot may be of some use to indicate an active infection. Maybe.

...and seeing an LLMD at this point, given my very mild symptoms, would be just as inconclusive.

If you think this might be a relapse, don't you think it's better to attack it early on than wait for it to get worse? I would think that if this were a relapse, the problem could be dealt with naturally or with lower doses of abx than to wait until things get worse.....

People here have given you their opinions about bloodtests vs. symptoms. No bloodtest is conclusive...symptoms speak more about the disease.

I guess I don't understand why you would think that an appointment with a lyme literate physician would prove inconclusive. If you think your symptoms might be a signal to a relapse, what makes you think that a lyme literate doc wouldn't help you?

quote:

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Originally posted by janet thomas:
Key Lime Pie

Interesting about Bowen, I've posted a couple of times asking about what technique they use. I thought it was a fluorescent antibody they used to tag the antigen. I phoned them and couldn't get an answer.

Do you know what they use for Babs or Ehrlichia?

It would seem that you are right about the silver stain not being specific for Bb. But what other spirochetes might be in the blood? Interesting. Also, since Bb is quite scarce in the blood, do they use a concentration technique? Or does everyone actually have spirochetes in the blood?

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oops. You're quite right Janet - they do use a flourescent tag attached to an antibody for a spirochetal antigen. Its not clear if they use a silver stain at all. So I better amend my original post : )

The thing I'm not sure about is whether that antigen is specific for Bb or whether other bugs have it also.

The whole thing is so confusing. Whatever Bowen is seeing - they see them a lot. Bb is supposed to be quite rare in the blood stream, and yet these guys have no trouble picking it out of a few cc's a serum. They don't have any technique for concentrating the sera either - on the contrary - they dilute it!

Its weird. Maybe they'll be vindicated in their test one day - but in the meantime I remain puzzled and sceptical.

Don't know about Babs etc. I wish those guys would publish so I can read more about it.

Don't know if there are other keets in the blood - although I know keets are quite common in the gums and can easily be seen on gum scrapings! So there are probably many other keets running around.

But who knows? Maybe everyone really does have Bb these days - maybe its a modern plague - and maybe they're responsible for all human ills? Who knows?

Anyway, just voicing my thoughts. Its all confusing.

KLP

what you are experiencing my not even be a relapse but a continuation of lyme because the med dose may not have been enough to kill the bacteria - just stun in for a few months....
cootiegirl

I don't think the amoxi was the best drug and it does not seem like he was on meds long enough. He just had Igenex testing and sees an llmd in two weeks.

It is being tuned into the varied symptoms - having another son with chronic lyme - and finding this board that alerted me to pay attention to how he is not quite himself.

Another unfortunate Lymenet argument you may have read by now, however, is that your experience is shared by people who have both Lyme and babesia. What frequently happens is they are treated for mild Lyme, the symptoms go away, and then some trigger like stress or hormonal changes causes both diseases to come back with a vengeance. Although we have no proof of this theory at all, many feel that people with Lyme cannot recover unless they treat their babesia, and any other co-infections as well. This is what happened to me--I had incurable Lyme for over four years before I started babesia and bartonella treatment, and then there was sudden improvement.