Her GP put her on a 10 day course of antibiotics for the infection which didn't relieve her symptoms at all. They told her they could only treat the bacterial overgrowth one time with antibiotics. They sent her on her way.

She went to see a doc at a big university teaching hospital. He plans to treat the bacterial overgrowth 7 days per month for a year, and prescribed flagyl.

She has bloating in her stomach and weight gains/losses from day to day, week to week of approximately 20 pounds. Her stomach feels very hard to the touch and she never knows what size clothing she will have to wear when she wakes up in the a.m.

I think her problem is lyme and the bacterial overgrowth is borrelia, bloating may be yeast.

Anyone else have this experience, or do you have any words of wisdom for me?

She has many, many, many symptoms that could be attributed to lyme, but she refuses to travel out-of-state to see a LLMD.

Any/all input much appreciated!

Well after just two weeks of appropriate treatment, the pain was much less, the HORRIFIC food allergies (could only eat about 5 things) improved tremendously, basically, it was a HUGE improvement. Mind you, this was after 18 months of being unable to eat just about anything and being miserable and losing gobs of weight.

Strange thing is that she says she doesn't have any pain, just the bloating and hard stomach (looks very pregnant). She doesn't seem to have food allergies.

I think the first doc did a CLO test and endoscopy, but that's all I know. Is the CLO a susceptibility test, or just a test to detect bacterial infection? The 2nd doc did perform an x-ray of her stomach, but no results yet. I don't know if he's guessing his butt off or not, we didn't discuss her entire visit yet.

I went through the same exact thing, and although they cultured the bacteria in my stomach, the best they could say was that it resembled H. pylori, but they were not certain. The antibiotics did nothing for my stomach except to cause things to worsen. It was a herx, but I didn't know it at the time/didn't know I had lyme.

I am wondering if whatver she has might be compounded by candida. This can cause bloating and that "hard stomach".

She may want to also look into doing an intestinal cleanse and also a parasite cleanse. The one that I do, and the part that I think really helps, is the charcoal/bentonite clay that acts like an intestinal vacuum, absorbing a lot of little buggers and toxins.

quote:

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Originally posted by Biting Back:
Am trying to keep an open mind.
I think the first doc did a CLO test and endoscopy, but that's all I know. Is the CLO a susceptibility test, or just a test to detect bacterial infection? The 2nd doc did perform an x-ray of her stomach, but no results yet. I don't know if he's guessing his butt off or not, we didn't discuss her entire visit yet.

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A CLO test is a blood test that looks for h. pylori, the bug that contributes to ulcers. He SHOULD have taken a culture for other bugs (including yeast) when he did the endoscopy. That would have been the right thing to do. So, perhaps that was done, but if so, your sis should be able to get those results.

My bet is that was not done. Alternatively (and this is what I did after not having any luck determining the origin of my food allergies, bloating, and pain for so long), she might try going to a more "alternative" doc and do a Great Smokies Diagnostic Lab stool test. They test for any and all bacteria, yeast, and parasites and if they find any, the do tests to see what antibiotics (and herbs/supplements) will kill the bugs.

Here's the link to the lab and the GI tests (I had the first one on the list): http://www.gsdl.com/home/assessments/findsystems/gastro.html

Collecting the goods for the test is a bummer (pun intended), but wow, what a difference the results made in my health! The great thing about this test is that you know exactly what you are dealing with be it yeast, bacteria, or parasite (or some combination) AND you know what will get rid of it.

They just can't bring themselves to explain this! Most ducks don't believe in systemic yeast!

Why don't you send her this link on yeast? Tell her to try it for a few weeks [religiously] and see how she feels. YOu might also need to explain that she may feel worse in the beginning due to the die-off.

Candida elimination: http://flash.lymenet.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/021412.html

Yeast: http://flash.lymenet.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001199.html[/URL] http://www.panix.com/~candida/ http://www.candida-yeast.com/
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