www.Hypersmash.com Beating Lyme: Treatment

Treatment

After my 2nd GP visit I got sent straight to the hospital where I spent about an hour with a neurosurgeon there. He took my blood to test for a whole range of things including Lyme disease.

In early August 2010 I got a phone call from my neurosurgeon saying that I had tested positive to lyme disease and needed to come to the hospital that day for a lumbar puncture to determine whether I also had the disease in my brain and nervous system.

Waiting for the lumbar puncture was pretty nerve wracking (I had read horror stories about the procedure on the internet) but actually it was pretty pain free. I was put into a brain injury room with 4 other people who all seemed so sick that I really questioned whether I was sick enough to be there at all.

The results came back and they weren't good - I also had lyme disease in my brain which would make it much harder to treat.

In cases where lyme disease is in the blood stream but not in the brain/nervous system then, at least here in the Netherlands, you are prescribed a course of antibiotics to be taken at home.

When the disease is present in your brain/nervous system you need to have a 3 week course of antibiotics administered via IV drip in the hospital.

Initially I spent a couple of nights in the hospital to make sure the antibiotics wouldn't have unexpected adverse side effects. Then it was back home to begin the daily trips to the hospital for my IV infusions.

The next three weeks were tough. I had expected the pain and symptoms to improve once I started treatment, but actually they got much worse. Months later I found out that this was a hercx reaction and was to be expected.

The worst problems were the nerve pain, arthritis (I called it bone pain) and insomnia. The insomnia at that stage was largely due to the pain. Every minute or so I'd have a bout of crippling pain that would leave me curled up on the floor. I was taking a ridiculous amount of pain killers and sleeping pills but the most sleep I would get over the course of 24 hours was 30 minutes. It was tough, tough going.

But I tried to stay positive and over time things got slightly better.  After 3 weeks of daily IV treatment my hospital visits were over and it was back home to recover. As the weeks and months wore on I improved and 3 months down the line I was feeling much better, although I still couldn't wear shoes because of the nerve pain and was still not sleeping.

I tried some alternative treatments and the one that worked best for me was acupuncture. After my first acupuncture treatment I managed to get almost 6 hours sleep which was by far the most sleep I'd had in months!! Before that treatment I would have given all my posessions just to get a decent night's sleep. I cried with relief after that sleep!

After that I started to explore other ways in which I could help my body heal. Primarily this was through nutrition. More on this in the posts in my blog.

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