possible lyme -- to take antibiotics? help appreciated!

Hi all,
I'm a first time poster and am not sure if I have lyme, but have had chronic flaring neurological symptoms and joint pain for the last year and a half with no successful diagnosis. I managed to get 10 days of antibiotics in September after which I had no symptoms for months, but about a month ago I had a sudden flare up (very bad twitching and shoulder/arm inflammation and weakness). An out of hours doctor prescribed me a week's worth of antibiotics incase I had an infection -- my question is do I take them? I'm aware that treatment for lyme takes much longer and I'm worried about making it resistant by taking a shorter course. But at the same time I'm desperate to do something and am finding it impossible to get a diagnosis. To take or no? Can it hurt? If it might make things worse I will try to hold on. Thankyou xx

What were the antibiotics you already took, and what are the kind being offered? The worry is sending the bacteria into cyst form with mono treatment.

If you're interested in looking into a Lyme literate doctor, please enable your email on your profile and start a thread "Looking for an LLMD in __________"(your location)

An LLMD is a doctor that has knowledge of Lyme disease, in a nutshell.

Most practitioners know nothing about Lyme or the co-infections, except for what the Centers for Disease Control want them to know. The UK unfortunately, and other countries, look to the U.S. for treatment standards.

You'd have to watch the movie "Under Our Skin" to understand what I'm talking about.

Anyway, I know from friends in Englad that the NHS takes the same limited view of these diseases and healing them as the Infections Disease Society of America and CDC do here.

Borrelia have survived eons of time under every conceivable condition, and is proficient at using what it can in our body to protect itself. One of the ways is to encapsulate itself in microscopic cyst formations that have a 'blood brain barrier' around it that require particular 'killing' agents to break through...and then you need another 'killing' agent to destroy the released bacteria.

That's why many LLMD's go at the infection with 2 or 3 antibiotics in short sequence so that they can work together.

Hi Litlover07 - welcome!

If you email me I will give you some treatment facilities/Dr.s names in the U.K.

Click on the envelope below my screen name to send me an email.

The treatment for a chronic infection will not be a few months - it will take longer than that, unfortunately.

julymorning said...
Yes, I hope I was clear that I was referring to treatment time lasting beyond cessation of symptoms, not total treatment time.

Yes, you were.

Litlover07 said...
Great thankyou, I will email. I do have an appointment with a rheumatologist but I don't hold out much hope.

Without trying to offend anyone or any profession, rheumatologists treat autoimmune conditions they know nothing about in terms of the causes. They help a lot of people but there is a lack of understanding of the deep connections regarding etiology. Questions like: Why is my joint swollen, why is my immune system hyperactive, why do i need to suppress it in the first place?? It's like having a bad case of strep throat and get ibuprofen as treatment. It hides the problem while it continues to get worse...

The sad part with lyme disease is because it was discovered in the city of Lyme, CT because of a mysterious pandemic of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (lots of children complaining their joints hurt), the disease and its effects have traditionally been associated with the field of rheumatology and gone towards state funded research budgets for alleviating autoimmune responses instead for killing the pathogen that produces the problem. This is at the root of the lyme controversy. If you like "history", you can watch this video from the pinned time in the link:

/youtu.be/H8t6j_HVTkA?t=114