How I Treat my Lyme Disease

NOTE: Each person needs to work out a customized protocol with a Lyme-literate doctor.  It is imperative to remember that even if we share identical symptoms and identical diagnoses, each body will respond to various protocols differently.  We need to find our own unique treatment with the help of our licensed medical practitioner.

I have tried most every alternative protocol – at least those within my scraped together budget -and have written extensively about each protocol I know of either in my blog or in my ebooks.

My Lyme Neurologist has diagnosed my life-long illness as “Post-Lyme Auto-Immune Syndrome with severe immune system deficiencies.” This was my treatment plan as of fall 2009; however, as of October (19)2010, I began IVIG infusions every 3 weeks for a 3 month trial) after 9 months of diagnostic testing which proved my significantly deficient immune system, and severely depleted IVIG. I was taken off all antibiotics in preparation for this powerful treatment, and continued with the list of supplements and prescription drugs below. 

I was very surprised to experience such a dramatic herx after my first infusion. This makes sense but I wasn't thinking about herxing...(DUH!) The side effect of headaches blew rapidly into migraines (which for me are still preferable to the other symptoms of neuro Lyme.)

I thought to myself, "If this is the path out of hell, I will gladly suffer through any number of migraines." However, it appears that a massive amount of hydration before during and after will take care of all but 2 or 3 days of severe migraines and the intensity subsides slightly after each infusion.

After 3 months, my recovery was remarkable! Of all the protocols I have tried, nothing has come close to giving me actually MORE energy than I had before my collapse, I was able to eat dinner in a restaurant with 2 of my children, my 18 month grandchild and husband...the first time out in over 4 years! Without earplugs or even struggles to "get through"! I wasn't a ghost watching in pain from afar, I was having FUN!!

New tests show my immune system is improving. I am approved for six more months of infusions before we re-evaluate. I hate to get my hopes up too high because I am far from symptom free, but even with the migraines and herxing I feel better than I have in years and years!!

Back to the treatment:

Horses:

I'm surrounded by horses and have gone from trying to ride - the horse walking with someone holding a lead line to the horses bridle, but at least I am out of bed, right?And now I am holding the reins on my own (yes I wear a helmet) and walk, trot and canter!!  The joy this gives me nourishes my soul and I think it may kill spirochetes without toxic die-off. (This is my attempt at humor so please don't get upset by my giddy irreverence!)

Supplements:

• B-complex (From Fatigue to Fantastic) 
• ApplePoly 
• Coral Calcium 
• Gold 360  

• Resveratrol 
• GABA 
• Magnesium 
• Transfer Factor 

My Five Element Shake  described in ebook (ignore overlap of products)

I have been on very strong narcotic pain relief for the intense neuropathic pain.  I have just recently purchased a "tens machine" (transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator) - an intensity select combo unit which includes "TENS" technology with EMS (Electrical Muscle Stimulation), IF (Interferential mode) and MIC (Microcurrent mode). 

I will be blogging more about these new devices.

TENS has been around but technology continues to advance which affects older devices with new instrumentation and tools to evaluate and maximize the benefit of these devices.

The rest will have to wait until I'm more confident with my infusions. See the following posts on IVIG:

http://www.lymediseaseresource.com/wordpress/happiness-is-total-recovery-from-chronic-lyme-disease-ivig-part-one/

http://www.lymediseaseresource.com/wordpress/happiness-is-total-recovery-from-chronic-lyme-disease-ivig-part-two/

http://www.lymediseaseresource.com/wordpress/happiness-is-total-recovery-from-chronic-lyme-disease-ivig-part-three/

I have more hope right now at the end of January 2011 than I have ever had yet! I promise to keep everyone posted.

2012 UPDATE

Some of you may have heard about my participation in a cutting edge treatment developed in Europe that will be published by the end of the year.  I can't say much about the treatment yet due to a signed non-disclosure, but I will tell you that my supplements have changed as a result in order to participate - I order PropaxNT through Amazon.  It includes many of the single supplements I took before.