Lyme test after antibiotic treatment

Hi Jeb, welcome!

Since your wife did have symptoms...then 10 or 14 days really isn't long enough treatment to be certain that its' in remission.
I would get her to a LLMD for your peace of mind.

The testing is not reliable...and yes it often is negative when done so soon after the bite.

We can help you find a LLMD: Just start a new thread: "Looking for LLMD in/near_____" and fill in the blank.
You can also contact me via email and I will send you names for your location.

You should enable your email (through My Profile) so members can send you names privately. We don't post the names on here for privacy reasons...we need to protect our LLMD's.

Thanks.

Just to clarify. We're not sure if what she had was Lyme, and that is part of what is bothering me. Whatever it was, I want to make sure that she gets the proper treatment to address any possible problem before it is too late. I imagine most doctors will not treat someone who currently appears healthy. I will take your advice and post in a different thread about LLMDs in our area.

-J

Are you aware of all the other co infections. If it is Lyme , it rarely travels alone. Many of us have more than one co infections also. There is Bartonella,Babesiia, Mycoplasma, Ehrlichia, Stari, Rocky mountain Spotted fever, relapsing fever, morgellons, powassin and I may have missed some.




Igenix is a good place to be tested. You need a doctor to sign off on request and they are more reliable than most regular labs for testing for Lyme and co infections.

Jeb J said...
Thanks.

Just to clarify. We're not sure if what she had was Lyme, and that is part of what is bothering me. Whatever it was, I want to make sure that she gets the proper treatment to address any possible problem before it is too late. I imagine most doctors will not treat someone who currently appears healthy. I will take your advice and post in a different thread about LLMDs in our area.

-J

But, you are going to treat her as if she does have lyme...and then she does need more than the 14 days.

You could try Ceftin (Cefuroxime acetyl)

Here are the Lyme Treatment Guidelines - scroll down to page 18. You will see antibiotic choices with dosages.


www.lymenet.org/BurrGuide200810.pdf

It seems like you treated very quickly which is a good thing. The odds are really on your side. You need to remember that most of the people on this site are suffering from CHRONIC lyme and have been for long periods of time. To put this in some perspective, you mentioned your wife being bedridden for 3 days. With chronic Lyme, you stay bedridden for months and years. I have been mostly bedridden for over a year.

The vast majority (80-90%) will get better and stay better after a short course of treatment. The people on this site, myself included, are the unlucky minority who didnt realize they were dealing with Lyme and didnt treat fast enough and now have gone chronic. We are the ones who fell through the cracks so to speak because we dont live in an endemic area or our doctors didnt see fit to treat, or we didnt even think of lyme.

The strains of Lyme that exist in your area are the ones that are most closely studied and are the most succeptible to early treatment. If you look at the statistics, more than 80% of Lyme is diagnosed in the northeast, and 80-90% of these people treat early and never have any future problems, mainly because there is heightened awareness in this area. Thats hundreds of thousands of people who treat early and never have future problems. This is one of the reasons chronic Lyme patients are accused of being crazy because most peoples experience with the disease is a very simple treatment and they are fine. Also there is a lot of evidence that says even just one dose of doxycycline is enough to kill Lyme if taken within 72 hours of a bite.

Martha Stewart jokes about getting Lyme 2-3 times a year and takes a short course of doxy each time and is fine. Its so routine in some areas that its just looked at as a passing summer flu and people treat and move on and forget about it. It really is a mystery why some like myself are so badly affected.

You hear a lot about Lyme relapse, but this doesnt generally happen with people who were only sick for 3 days. This happens to people who were sick for a long period of time, get a short remission and then they relapse. This happens to a lot of people quite quickly as soon as they stop antibiotics.

I understand your desire to be thorough, as Lyme is a horrible experience once it goes chronic, but your wife's experience doesnt fit this profile at all. Chronic Lyme is not your problem right now and theres no reason to assume it will be. Dont expect the worst, expect the most likely and the most probable.

If it aint broke, dont fix it. You will be hard pressed to find any doctor anywhere that will treat you with no symptoms. Most chronic Lyme sufferers are used to having our symptoms dismissed by regular doctors and then must seek LLMD's to diagnose us clinically. While it is true that LLMDs will treat people who test negative and dont recall a tickbite or rash, I doubt very seriously that even an LLMD would consider treating someone with absolutely no symptoms. LLMDs treat people who were failed by conventional medicine. It sounds like you had great success with conventional medicine and your wife responded exactly as she should have. LLMDS are used to dealing with VERY sick people, some in wheelchairs desperately looking for answers. If you go see an LLMD you will likely get a strange look if you tell them you have absolutely no symptoms. Not to mention the fact you will pay 600-1000 for an initial consultation which is not covered by insurance.

Even with veterinarians, they wont treat unless symptoms are present. In some areas, 90% of dogs test positive, but less than half of those have symptoms. People have also tested positive but do not have any health issues.

I know in my case I didnt realize I had been infected for about two months. That was two years ago and I am much worse now. There was no vast improvement at the time that I treated. There was no mistaking that treatment had failed and my symptoms have been constant, ongoing and undeniable. I think this is the case for most chronic Lyme sufferers. If your wife was dealing with a doxycycline resistant form, she would not have experienced any great relief, IF she even had it to begin with.

It's great that you want to be proactive, but I think you are dealing with a lot of hypotheticals, and I dont think this type of worry is justified at this point. This is coming from a chronic Lyme sufferer whose life is consumed by worry. Lyme is oftentimes about troubleshooting. We have health issues and we try hard to backtrack and try to figure them out. This can become an endless maze. In your case there is no trouble to shoot. Be thankful you got it early and that your wife is healthy.

A lot of the suffering that comes from Lyme is because there are no hard and fast answers. The more you look into the Lyme world the more you will realize this. For those of us that are very sick, there is no endpoint to therapy. There is no test that prove you are cured. We treat until we feel better. It sounds like your wife is already there.

It sounds like your wife and your daughter both had immediate improvement after treating and this is the case for most people if treated early enough. If you want to be extra vigilant you could have her do another course of doxy just to be safe, for 28 days. But again with no symptoms doctors probably wont agree and you will probably have to order antibiotics online without a prescription from another country or order 'fish antibiotics' from a pet pharmacy.

I would encourage you to be on the lookout and closely monitor your wife's health going forward, but dont assume everything is Lyme and definitely dont assume treatment failed when it appeared to work. As someone who has been forced to deal with this confusing maze, I wouldnt wish the second guessing or worrying on anyone else anymore than I would wish them to have the disease itself.

Also wanted to mention that my regular Dr. (not lyme literate) - she will offer anyone that comes to her office who has a bug bite (no rash) and they think it was a tick bite with three weeks of antibiotics.