posted
I was getting dressed this morning and visibly noticed this weird lump on my right ribcage, on the lowest rib, near the center of my chest (close to the breastbone).
At first, I thought it was my rib sticking out. I have definitely lost weight. But my left ribcage feels different--no lump there.
When I push on it, it gives a little bit (not much, it's pretty firm). It doesn't feel like bone. Maybe more like cartilige, I don't know. It's probably the surface area equivalent of my thumbnail.
I'm wondering if anyone knows if this might have anything to do w/Lyme & Co. (bart & babs), or if I have something new to worry about.
Of course, this happened on a Friday, so I won't be able to see a dr. until next week. I'm sure I'll be freaking out about it all weekend.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.
Posts: 67 | From SF Bay Area | Registered: Jun 2008
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I'm sure there may be other things, but this is one possibility I've been thinking about a lot recently after I discovered a lump on the bottom of my foot. I started reading about tertiary syphilis, because it's supposed to be so similar to chronic Lyme and learned that in tertiary syphilis, there are lumps called "gummas" that can occur.
The gummas were found to have only rare spirochetes, but I recently started using topical bee venom called Venex and found that when I applied it to the lump, I herxed. Since using the Venex for about the last 2 weeks, the lump has almost gone away.
This seems to be a sign/symptom that our Drs haven't really put much thought into yet, if I'm right.
I'm at the LDA conference right now in SF, and I felt pretty validated that the first speaker, Dr. Steven Barthold from UC Davis said that the spirochetes like collagen the best and will go "en masse" to the skin, the largest organ in the body. I've suspected for quite some time that there are tons of bugs in our skin, which is one reason I started trying a variety of topicals to see how they'd work. I spoke with him about it a little later, and he said he didn't think topicals would do much, but I told him I had had really good results with melittin (the active ingredient in bee venom) ointment.
When I see my Dr next, I'm going to ask him to write an Rx for topical Flagyl, to see if the cyst busting agent will do anything more than the oral tinidazole does.
Posts: 975 | From California | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
Thank you so much for responding. I can already feel my anxiety level coming down just after reading your post. Now I can get some sleep tonight.
When you have a chance, can you post where you got the bee venom ointment from?
Also, I am very interested in what you reported from the conference. Any additional details would be appreciated. Sorry I'm not there!
Posts: 67 | From SF Bay Area | Registered: Jun 2008
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I really enjoyed the conference today. Lots of good speakers. The only one I didn't get in to was the one who did CFS, chronic fatigue.
There were several speakers who talked about different, new technologies that help visualize or measure spirochetes or other infections in animal models that were really amazing.
Julie, don't go only by my word on the lump. I think you should still get it checked out by your LLMD or PCP, but it sounds very much like my lump.
The last speaker talked about several things including tigecycline, which apparently about 100 times more effective than doxycycline, but it's only available as an IV form. He was very excited about it.
Dr Fallon showed a study comparing commercial labs and specialty labs (such as Igenex) and said that he was surprised to find that the big commercial labs did an equally good, if not better job than the specialty labs. This brought Dr. Shah from Igenex to the microphone to question/challenge these results, but Dr. Fallon did not back down.
The questions posed by the crowd were excellent. It was apparent that there were a lot of top notch people in attendance.
I felt that a number of the speakers were not totally supportive of long term antibiotic therapy, including Dr. Fallon. Maybe I read him wrong, but that was my sense, because he stressed a couple of times that there were no studies that supported long term antibiotic therapy.
Posts: 975 | From California | Registered: Apr 2007
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