Colds / Flus With Lyme - Don't feel them or feel them differently?

I noticed since my onset of Lyme I pretty much never really got traditional cold / flu symptoms.

The current theory that I'm believing is that we still get them but our immune systems don't mount the same type of response as a normal healthy person.

At one point I thought I just don't feel anything from them.

But I noticed a pattern from the last couple of times my daughter got a strong cold / flu / ear infection.

A few days later I had a flare up in symptoms that include depersonalization / derealization (which I didn't have previously). Extra nausea, dizzyness, disconnect from emotions, feeling like I'm in a haze, air hunger, slowness, brainfog.

I previously thought it might have been correlated to treatment, but now it seems more like maybe I feel cold / flu / viral symptoms differently than a normal person.

Did anyone else notice any pattern when people were sick in your house and then you had weird symptoms for about as long as a cold / flu / virus?

The colds/flus I've had since Lyme & Co have been much worse than before. I'm not a fan of flu vacc. I became very ill a couple of years in a row immediately following flu vacc. LLMD is the one who told me it is not a good idea for those with Lyme to have the vaccination. I did have one this year, did not become sick following it, but 3 weeks ago came down with a terrible flu. So ... I seem to get as sick with or without it.
Would be interesting to know just what impact Lyme has.

Girlie said...
I’ve never caught many colds or flu viruses - throughout my life.

I don’t believe in the theory that it means low immune function.

Interesting. I feel like I've caught a cold pretty much ever single year when season changes from fall to winter / when temperature changes.

It was pretty much every year and it always started with a scratchy feeling at the back of my throat, and then would develop into a cold.

I pretty much never get that scratchy feeling, and almost never get a stuffy nose, fever, runny nose. I've had mini exceptions to this, but they never felt the same as colds in the past.

I think "low immune function" is a pretty vague statement. And with pretty vague statements it's easy for one to compare a type of "low immune function" with someone else who has a different type of "low immune function" and conclude you don't have it cuz you react differently than them. But in reality the immune system is a gigantic big puzzle that I don't think is 100% understood. And I believe often times people and doctors get used to the types of "low immune function" that they are used to. But could incredibly low CD57 be "low immune function"? Could the theory of spirochettes shedding OSPA blebs that keep your immune system busy chasing after those blebs and therefore it's technically a working immune system but in reality it's busy chasing something it can never resolve and maybe spends too much time on that and not enough on other infections possible? I believe even chronic stress has been tied to lowered immune function. And how many Lyme patients are dealing with chronic stress? I mean I really find it hard to believe that Lyme patients don't have some form of "low immune function" considering how often we get oppurtunistic coinfections, EBV, CMD, HHV6, etc. I think it's just a type of "low immune function" that hasn't been well characterized yet in textbooks but I'm 99% sure it's there.

Interesting.

My wife has had consistently low CD57, and consistently low WBC. I looked up old WBC counts and they were normal.

Interestingly she is the one who is barely affected by it.
She has european lyme.

I had High CD57 in the beginning and then averagish numbers. And tend to have consistently high WBC and I'm the one who's been totally disabled from it.

I recently found out that with LabCorp and Quest you could actually get all of your tests online. So I did and I graphed out CD57, WBC, C3A, C4A and compared my wife and mine.

Only real pattern I noticed was when my wife took Doxy her C4A dropped dramatically from about 1100 to 450. Our LLMD said that's a sign that she responds super well to Doxy. But then months later I see her C4A is back up in the thousands again.

Lymelearner, I tend to get dizzy and foggy when I have a cold now too. Sometimes my trouble with driving flares (it makes me feel sick/dizzy). That can be the first symptom of a cold for me.

That said, I am having full-blown regular cold symptoms right now for some variety.

I haven't got sick this past year at all, since i started treating. my wife and kid both on various occasions have been sick, it has been surprising that i didnt get it.

it was suspected that in 2016 i was infected with TBD (pretty certain), prior to that i used to get a few sinus infections every year that i thought were due to seasonal allergies. i started drinking organic green tea with local raw honey maybe 5 years ago, and my sinus infections started to go away (pre-lyme.) i stopped the local raw honey since i was diagnosed due to the sugar. but i think that local raw honey helped my immune system, tho its hard for me to explain why this past year i didn't catch anything.

I am on the same boat as lymelearner. I have never gotten "traditional" sick since getting sick with bart/babs back in December of 2017. Before then, I would always consistently get the usual cold/flu that would knock me out about 2 or 3 times a year that would last a couple days to a week with the scratchy throat, irritated/congested sinuses, and lots of coughing...never enough to debilitate me though and most times would still go into work and other normal functions and might have backed off a bit on my workout regimen and drank some hot tea and would be back on my feet again. As we grow older we begin to memorize the patterns of how our body responds to these short-lived viruses. Mine would always start with nasal discomfort/congestion, then work it's way to my head, then move down to the throat and end with coughing. However, ever since getting sick with bart/babs I have yet to get sick "the usual way" and it's been over an entire year. I could consider it a "lucky" year but I only remember one year of my life where I never got a cold and even then, I felt a couple times I was coming down with something.

My theory is that everyone is different how they respond to lyme + co and some of us are affected by it such that our immune system does not function/respond the way it used to in response to these common viruses. We don't know exactly what happens but the immune response to the common cold/flu virus tends to be in one of three ways:
1) Don't get sick at all
2) Get more sick
3) Get sick but manifests in a different way

I tend to be of category 1. This discussion has happened multiple times on these forums as I've browsed this topic many times before.

I've discussed this with my LLMD and she is in agreement with me..more studies need to be done and every patient is different but for me, when I start to exhibit the more "common cold/flu"-like symptoms it may mark the end of my battle with bart/babs. So, as opposed to the past, I am eagerly awaiting the itchiness of my throat and crazy coughing and mucous that I had become so acquainted to all my life to return to signal an immune system returning to normal.

I have not tested positive for low immune function/WBC but I got the bad flu last year and I was out a couple weeks. When I get a cold it lasts about 1.5x longer than it should. I have had a stuffed nose consistently for about two straight months now almost. I don't know if any of that's relevant lol. It seems my immune system is pretty healthy but then again I can't function normally so maybe it's just on 50% capacity at all times and I don't notice it.