What should people who have exhausted all options do? What are some ideas?

HI, I absolutely do not agree with your doctor. There are people on here that did not heal with antibiotics and then healed fully with herbs. Traveler will post on this and she is completely healed using herbs only. Herbs are VERY powerful and can heal you. Herbs are enough to heal. They can kill the lyme and heal your body.

It makes me angry that your doctor made that statement and now you are scared. It is NOT true. Herbs heal!

I can attest to benefitting from both abx (I take mine via IV) AND herbs… I think each body is different, everyone's health context is different, each infection is different, each treatment is different, and responses to treatment are different. If you really want to explore an herbal approach you should. I know several people on this forum are doing it w/out an LLMD but perhaps she can still support you in various ways.

p

plenty of people go to this place after they have exhausted other options--

http://hansacenter.com/

It may or may not cure you 100%--- but it can get your health back on track, in my opinion. I don't know if every single person who goes there gets significant help, maybe not. It may be a risk. But some people do get significant help from it.

hi alex, I hate to sound " harsh " but if your doctor were my doctor I would fire him/her. I am a RN and have been very involved in my own treatment plan.

first of all Diflucan is usually given to lyme patients and patient's with systemic ( whole body ) fungal infections or localized infections. I have noted many doctor's pulse it or give it over a specific time based on your fungal symptoms. And many doctors give it along with the antibiotics you get to keep you from getting a fungal infection. Some use diflucan alone or in combination with nystatin or vice versa. Nystatin only is given to kill yeast/fungus in the gut. It will not kill it anywhere else in your body. It is good for intestinal candida. taking a good probiotic,eating a paleo diet, no sugar, breads etc is a must, because sugar and breads, carbs feed yeast and fungus. there are many very good anti fungal herbs too. oregano oil is one.

I can tell you from my own experience and many others on this forum and in the literature I have researched that people do heal or get to a level of good quality of life with a treatment plan of herbs only. Some do antibiotics alone, some add herbs. Some only have had success with herbs because they could not tolerate the antibiotics. I myself could not tolerate 3 antibiotics at one time. I could only take one really and that was azithromycin. I have CNS lyme and I took azithromycin a long time which is a decent drug that will cross over into your brain thru the blood brain barrier. For CNS lyme you must be on a drug that will get into the brain. Some antibiotics will not penetrate the brain well. this drug took a long time but it got my symptoms down to tolerable. I took 2 months of the herbal jernigan's protocol and it eliminated all my bartonella symptoms I was having. I took Stephen Buhner protocol with my antibiotics which was helpful. Each individual is so different when it comes to the treatment of lyme disease and what he/she an tolerate. My personal opinion is that it has to do with how high your bacterial load is, and how well you can detox when it comes to what medications you can tolerate, herbs etc.

I now am taking Byron White herbal formula A BAB for babesia and it is the strongest stuff I have ever taken in that I am herxxing worse than any antibiotic. Many herbs are just as strong as and just as effective as antibiotics.

Many drugs today still come from herbs instead of being a synthetic or man made drug or substance. I am fascinated with witches and the history of witchcraft because witches were actually the first modern day doctors and nurses. They learned herbology to treat diseases back then, and used them during the birth of children. unfortunately, due to the church, politics, and a male dominated society, witches were accused of " being of satan " and tortured. burned, thrown out of town. Sometimes somebody wanted their home or land. So sad. So don't give up on yourself or your treatment. read all you can about current antibiotics and especially a good book on herbs for lyme disease. blessings jackie

I'm in this boat too, and working my way through Dr Horowitz's book Why Can't I Get Better.

After 2 years of multiple antibiotics for bartonella and getting to 80%, our daughter is now 99.9% and holding since Aug 2014 with Buhner's protocols for bartonella and babesia, and some herbs and supplements for detox (cilantro, diatomaceous earth).

Georgia Hunter is right on about nutrition. It is so important. If you haven't seen this TEDx talk, take a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc

Most of your diet really needs to be organic. Glyphosate will decimate the gut bacteria responsible for immune function and hinder their ability to detoxify toxins in the gut:

http://nhrighttoknowgmo.org/BreakingNews/Glyphosate_II_Samsel-Seneff.pdf

http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416

Glyphosate is a human endocrine disruptor:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19539684

And mineral chelator:

http://www.greenpasture.org/utility/showArticle/?objectid=7213

which decreases the amount of available mineral nutrition from plant food.

Glyphosate is not only used on GMO plants, but is used in large quantities as a grain desiccant, used to produce uniform drying conditions of conventional grains (wheat, corn, oats, etc.) and legumes (beans). If your grains/legumes are not organic, they have likely been dosed with glyphosate before harvest.

http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/cpr/plant-science/glyphosate-as-a-pre-harvest-aid-in-small-grains-07-17-14

Because conventional meat producing animals are fed these glyphosate sprayed grains, they concentrate glyphosate in their fatty tissue, which we eat when we consume them in turn.

I firmly believe that only part of our illnesses are caused by bacterial infection. The rest is caused by increased toxin intake, a decreased ability of our bodies to detoxify and insufficient nutrition caused by conventional farming methods.

Immune suppression caused by the combination of lyme/co and decreased gut function/nutrition is in my opinion the cause for the proliferation of many other infections (ie strep) and cancers.

Bee venom therapy, I am going to start soon. Check it out with a doctor so you can get an epi pen. There is a Lyme group on facebook that tell you how to do it, go to Apitherapy to treat Lyme & Co-infections Eugene OR.

Or you can find a local apitherapy to administer it to you thru a bee.

One thing to remember is that most of the doctors we see over the many years it takes to get a diagnosis and/or treatment are trained in Western Medicine. Western Medicine teaches that only pharmaceuticals work to treat things wrong in the body. Only the most opened minded consider addition treatments like herbs, hypnosis, warm water therapy, etc.

But up until the last hundred or so years there were no pharmaceuticals. People didn't say "oh I hope this goes away because there is nothing I can do". There were healers that used products in nature to treat ailments.

For example, aspirin was originally found in plants with varying degrees in strength. Bayer figured out how to synthesize it and one of the first pain relievers born.

In China, even today, few people use Western Medicine. It's not that they don't have any illnesses that need to be treated. They just go to a Chinese Medicine doctor. They have 1000's of years experience working with herbs. It's certainly not that they were cured with a placebo. They know what the herb properties are and they use them accordingly. Personally, I don't get the we can diagnose from looking at your tongue but like many things it's a mystery.

I started investigating the idea of using herbals as soon as I found out that there is no much difficulty getting treatment. I had just toyed with the idea. Then I was directed to this forum and noticed that although some people use antibiotics many, many people use either herbs or a combination.

I would have to agree that if it were me I'd fire the doctor. I've fired a lot of doctors in the past. It sounds like the doctor is doing "the I am God and you will do as I tell you" bit. If your doctor is just dictating and not including you as a part of the healthcare decision making, it's time for her to go. She doesn't sound open to anything and will very likely get upset with you when she's proven wrong.

The best doctors will always say they don't know everything and are willing to learn along with you.
You should never hear the words "I don't believe in ..." out of a doctors mouth. They should say something more like "This is what we know about..."; "This treatment has been used for ... period of time. The side affects can be ..." "These are the options we have..."

One of my best docs always says "here are the options we have. Do your research and let me know if you want to try it." He doesn't always agree with me and if I want to try something he doesn't think is safe (or has not enough data to decide) he has veto power. During my last two visits, we have had actually arguments about Lyme. It was left that he would sign off on the order for the Ingenex testing, but he wouldn't be able to treatment because its not his bailiwick. I said I wouldn't ask him to treat me. There is too much controversy surrounding treatment and I would never risk his license. He also said it would be my job to get online and find a doctor to treat me. The very last thing he said was he did remember reading something recently about Lyme testing. I asked if it had mentioned the name Ingenex and he said no. I then said there is a test that expands the number of bands read for the Western Blot test beyond the CDC guidelines. He said that was it! So I can guarantee that at my next visit he's going to want to know how the test is interpreted.

He also tells me things like if you go to see a new doctor don't tell them you have a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. AS soon as they hear that they'll tune out. One of my meds is pain meds and I'm actually on the max dose. My doctor recently joined a new practice which includes pain medicine specialists and since we hadn't changed anything in a long time and I was have more pain, he asked me to setup an appointment with one the the pain docs to see what they had to say. I did and she ran all kinds of test with no abnormalities. We tried something new that didn't help. We left it at I have Fibromyalgia. She did want to try a week of Prednisone to see if it was really systemic. Eventually I did and it was the first time I had felt normal in 30 years. The thing is my original doc wanted to know if she balked at the Fibro diagnosis and did she try to talk me out of using pain medication. The answer to both was no. I know that he filed her name in the back of his head for the next time he needed to give a referral.

I really don't know have done without him the last 15 years.

One thing to make sure though is that you don't fall into the "I have a miracle cure and just pay me $400 a month for a pill you can only get from me" trap.