sometimesdilly
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posted
warning- this is very long.
--- Notes and quotes from POX by Deborah Hayden. My LLMD (who recommended the book) said I would recognize myself over and over while reading it. I did. ----
T. pallidum (syphilis baceria) mutated sometime in the 19th century and for the first time, began invading the CNS.
Syp invades every cell of the body.
Syp is a chronic, inflammatory, relapsing disease.
Diagnosis: Does this sound familiar?
`` In everyday practice syphilis often evaded diagnosis. Many drs treating patients with untreated Syp did not step back to view their patients' histories... When faced with a syp that seemed to be a clear case of something else-rheumatism, arthritis, gout, eczema, hypertension, epilepsy, headache, stomachache, jaundice, mania, depression, dementia, schizophrenia, deafness..- as often as not the condition presenting itself ..was taken for the disease to be treated. Patients would see dr after dr...and finally humbly accept a diagnosis of hypochondria.''
Remedies for early syp were based on the awareness the ketes were already embedded in tissue---they included mercury and arsenic.
1st blood test- 1907 - great at identifying early syp, ``grossly inefficient in later stages.' High percentage of false negatives resulted in many missed diagnoses that might have been found by physicians lulled to complacency by faulty lab findings.
Stages:
1. Primary
before apperance of a lesion, concentration of ketes reaches 10 million organisms per gram of human tissue. Immune system fights back, huge amt of ketes die, many others ``cluster'' in tissue.
Initial lesions diappear within 2-6 weeks. Ketes spread via blood and lymph, prefer tissue, have reached the brain within these weeks.
2. Secondary
Systemic infection with fever and rash and extreme fatigue follow 5-12 weeks after appearance of first lesion.
Addtl symptoms: bone and joint pain, loss of appetite, insomnia, sore throat, GI problems, headaches
3. Early years
not a lot of ketes, but they are everywhere except hair teeth and nails. Symptoms and pains migrate.
4. Middle years
rashes reappear. Neurological symptoms increase in severity, including changes in personality, memory loss, and mania, extreme mood shifts, paranoia, rages, irritability, delusions of grandeur...
Sensations of electric currents in the head, extreme dizziness, auditory hallucinations. Episodic and progressive paralysis, severe headaches, insomnia, weight loss, tremors, difficulties with speech and writing, neuropathies, extreme exhaustion, seizures,.
Apathtic uncertianity, indecisiveness, inability to deal with important problems.
Onset of cardiovascular syp can occur within 5 years of initial infection; the disease is especially damaging to aorta. Years out, sudden death due to heart damage not uncommon.
5. Tertiary Syp:
Paresis--dementia, alternating with periods of clarity.
Tabes Dorsalis- damage to nerve cells of spinal cord leads to inability to control movement. Difficulty urinating, impotence, blurred vision, numbness in hands and feet, perception of temp. fails.
Meningeal/meningovascular symp include - headache, nasea, vomiting, cranial nerve palsies, seizures, psychologival abnornalities, seizures. Strokes are common.
Treatment:
Pencillin does not reverse damage done.
Although penicillin effectively kills ketes, it does not killthem all. A dark-field microscope can find ketes inhte brain, the eye, the lymph nodes and temporal arteries.
Tissue from rabbits inoculated with syphilis and then adequately treated with penicillin will produce infection when injected into other rabbits.
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dilly
Posts: 2507 | From lost in the maze | Registered: Aug 2006
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northstar
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posted
Oh my that is soo familiar.
But, I thought syph was "treatable" now (although long term), and not relapsing?
Maybe they are wrong on that, too?
North.
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Greatcod
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posted
Very interesting, and suppportive of what we are trying to say about Lyme, which is that the bacteria are very very hard to eradicate. Interesting too, in that people looking through microscopes can find bacteria after treatment. The IDSA case rests entirely on indirect flawed tests.
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sometimesdilly
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posted
north- i think relapsing is this case was meant when syp is left untreated. but i don't know for sure.
greatcod- exactly. i know the Lyme and syphilis spirochetes are different organisms. and given that syphilis ketes have never opted for any other host but our bodies, perhaps they are ahead of Bb on the learning curve of how best to invade us and stay evasive, so are not identical in what they do to us.
i'm pretty sure my llmd thinks investigating syphilis isn't irrelevant to understanding Lyme. maybe that line of inquiry is two hops skips and a jump ahead of a field still dominated by arses who deny chronic Lyme exists.
dilly
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Areneli
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posted
Also testing for syphilis and retesting is not out of place.
There are also false negatives in syphylis.
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tailz
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posted
Why can't they just take tissue samples from us, and there will be their proof that we still have active infection?
I keep reading that ketes are found here and there, in spite of treatment - why rely on inaccurate blood tests?
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sometimesdilly
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tailz- that's a good question. anyone know why tissue isn't taken, much like performing a biopsy?
my only guess would be that drs wouldn't like how invasive that process would be especially without a clear idea about where in the body they should go collecting the tissue?
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Jellybelly
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Gesh, this is sooo me. I have even been told about sudden death because of my heart issues. Blah!
Maybe I don't have Lyme at all:}
Posts: 1251 | From california | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Finding spirochetes in biopsies is pure blind luck and not very successful.
As with Tremonema, culturing Borrelia is also difficult.
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Vermont_Lymie
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posted
Frightening dilly, and WAY to close to home! Thanks for posting this selection.
And our treatment has similarity; bicillin shots are used for syphilis.
I was reading in Dr. S's great short review article -- Cave posted it recently -- that Bb has many times the genetic complexity of the syphilis kete!
Posts: 2557 | From home | Registered: Aug 2006
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sometimesdilly
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posted
hi Vermont
i found the historical parallels betwen syp and Lyme fascinating --one of my favorites tidbits: the term QUACKS for incompetent Dr's actually was fist used by "disgruntled" syphilis patients.
The medical parallels are frightening. But i think that though many of s's symptoms seem uncomfortably just like Lyme's and the progression is similiar,it doesn't mean that the two disease processes are the same at all. or does it? i don't know and i don't have the medical knowledge to judge.
for myself, one of the most important insights i took away from reading the history of syphilis was this:
those with syphilis and the few doctors who treated them faced the same problems we with chronic Lyme do now- inadequate and unreliable tests, Drs who could not see the forest for the trees and who as a result of their own limitations accused patients of making it all up, tx that made patients toxic in equal or greater measure than it mitigated symptoms...
all of that happened and more, and none of that, obviously, had a thing to do with insurance companies or with ego/profit-driven medicine or professional societies.
says to me both diseases are hugely complex and difficult in their own right even before bad intentions are factored in.
dilly
Posts: 2507 | From lost in the maze | Registered: Aug 2006
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klutzo
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posted
This is terrifying to me. I am "untreated" due to being allergic to all ABX except Cipro. I have had herbal tx that makes me herx, but after 4 yrs. of herbal tx, I have much more energy and far less night chills, but all other sx remain and some are worsening, esp. memory problems and ability to multi-task is gone.
As sick as I am, I sometimes see sx like seizures listed by folks here and think "thank God at least I don't have that symptom".
Now, after reading this, I realize my current sx are those listed for the "middle years", and the reason I don't have the super scary sx like seizures, paranoia, delusions of grandeur etc. is most likely just because I am not that far along yet, even after 21 yrs. of this crud.
I do have the tertiary sx of failure of temperature control already, and am not comfortable except between 76 and 79 degrees. At temps over 83 I have to crawl on the floor because I get so dizzy. Temps below 55 have caused arterial spasm bringing me to my knees clutching my chest.
I did have 3 EM rashes appear just last year, 20 yrs. after initital infection, and I was just mistakenly dx'd with bipolar disorder a couple of weeks ago. (I changed to a psych who undestands what severe brain damage like mine can do to personality, and that true bipolar does not suddenly start at age 56!).
It's very depressing to have the tertiary sx to look forward to (not). It makes sudden death from my considerable heart damage look good by comparison.
That was a VERY good point about insurance companies not being involved in syphilis patients in the old days being treated the same way we are being treated now. The specialization of medicine plus the litigous society we live in are combining to keep doctors from seeing the forest for the trees.
Klutzo
Posts: 1269 | From Clearwater, Florida, USA | Registered: May 2004
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Aniek
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posted
Klutzo,
Lyme and syphilis are different. There are similarities, but that does not mean that the symptoms or the progression are the same.
-------------------- "When there is pain, there are no words." - Toni Morrison Posts: 4711 | From Washington, DC | Registered: Mar 2004
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sometimesdilly
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posted
Klutzo-
i'm sorry if this info worried you.
As Aniek just pointed out, the two diseases are NOT the same, and because you (me too) can see myself in a list of s's symptoms doesn't mean a syphilis-like final stage of disease is what's in store for us.
Sorry you are feeling so unwell.
dilly
Posts: 2507 | From lost in the maze | Registered: Aug 2006
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