2nd day. Burning is double. Weakness is bad. Feel sick. Thought u couldn't herx from Bart. Have headache also.

Started with 500 mg once daily.

The problem I see with taking one of the fluroquinolones is how do you distinguish between a herx and a side effect?

The nerve pain could be a herx....or it could be a side effect. How will you know?

I know Buhner says no herxing with bart...but I know some LLMD's say you do herx.

Sorry you are having a bad time with the treatment, Tcoach1. I felt exactly the same way when I started the IV vanco, but I also couldn't move head/neck... bed-ridden for a week. It took me 2 wks to get past the initial blow but I eventually felt better.

But I think if you were getting "floxxed" you'd have developed different sx by now, so that's a good sign - I think.

Back in 2013, before I knew anything about anything or that I had Lyme & Co...
I was prescribed Levofloxacin along with various other abx prescribed for a 13-month long battle with chronic sinusitis and bronchitis. Nothing worked because it was a fungal infection (...MDs....sigh...)

But these various abx that are also prescribed for Lyme & Co kept bringing out very specific Lyme & Co sx, which finally made me suspect Lyme and hightail it to my LLMD.

But back to the Levofloxacin, which is a flouroquinalone, along with these other Lyme & co-specif sx, I started developing the classic "floxxed" sx - tight soles in feet, could barely walk in AM. But that's also when the GI attacks started, bone pain, other pretty bart-specific sx.

It was impossible at first to know the difference - I didn't know anything about bart. Over time, I learned and in retrospect I now understand what happened. I've also posed the same question - how do you know if it's a herx or abx harm? I was lucky enough to learn that my mother also had "allergic" responses to the Levofloxacin - like mine which was a anaphalactic reaction so I knew immediately to stop taking it.

So - how do we know the difference? I really don't know as I think the "floxxing" sx and bart sx are so very similar. The other reality is that many people have bart henselae - which is transmitted primarily by household cats so yes, they'll probably have a bart herx if they start taking an abx used to treat bart. Some people report "permanent" damage to the tendons from the floxxing... I don't think it sounds like long-term untreated bart but who really knows? That's certainly not what they're looking for in these studies and we know that these kinds of symptom-driven test results are pretty narrowly defined.

Sorry - this adds no information to the conversation. ;)

-p

My worse day on Cipro was day 3. My nerves went wonky! After that, the pain dissipated. We changed to Levaquinwith Doxy and I started Intramax all in the same weekend. I think I created the perfect storm. By day 7 of that concoction, my pains increased, I got strangely fatigued and my muscles went practically limp. I recovered from that mostly within 24 hrs but took additional days for my nerves to quiet down and my sleeping pattern to improve. My sleeping tends to get really bad a week before my period. My doc ended up stopping the doxy and had me take the Levaquin 2 days on and 1 day off. He’s not a fan of ppl herxing too much. That is a good thing to because I have to be able to function.