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Have i had bartonella my whole life?

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Posted 5/15/2018 10:26 PM (GMT -5)
Hey everyone, for those of you that don't know, I have bartonella. I finally figured out after these random stretch marks I had became much worse and i had symptoms like massive anxiety, depression,muscle spasm, depersonaluzation, painful soles, pretty much the whole shabammy. This all came after a traumatizing moment where I was at a party and saw a girl pass out and hit her head off the pavement while everyone stood around and just partied on! This girl could of been dead. Anyways, the next day my symptoms intensified and I think I made my bart just as active. Sorry , just some background. Anyways, I don't really know how I got bart. My only thing I can really
Connect it to is my house always being infested with fleas ever since I was born. Obviously it would get taken care of, but it felt like it would be months before it was. I know bartonella can spread through fleas, but is this likely? Could I have been infected by bart my whole life from these fleas?
Posted 5/15/2018 11:12 PM (GMT -5)
Yes, the fleas could have infected you - I think I may have been infected by fleas or cat bites/scratches as I had many cats as a child - and subsequently many cat bites and flea bites.


Are you currently treating Bart specifically ?
Posted 5/16/2018 7:16 AM (GMT -5)
I'm certain this is the case with me, too. We had cats with fleas growing up and though i didn't get officially sick until 25, there was always something different about me. Poor memory, frequently sick, terrible hangovers, slow to recover from workouts etc. Looking back, this has always been brewing
Posted 5/16/2018 8:09 AM (GMT -5)
I think I was born with bartonella. I had ear infections from infancy to age 8, trouble falling asleep and staying asleep from infancy to age 27, aching pains in my legs from early childhood until around age 40 that the pediatrician incorrectly diagnosed as growing pains, frequent colds or sinus infections, headaches starting at age 9, stretch marks on thighs since age 11, and more.

Like Aerose, I always felt like there was something different about me. My chronic Lyme/coinfection symptoms didn't hit until age 39 four days after a flu vaccine. Symptoms went full-on and became debilitating at age 45 after getting bronchitis.

Oddly, I've never had a positive test for bartonella, only borrelia and ehrlichia.

Just because you have obvious symptoms of bartonella and were exposed to fleas in no way means you couldn't also have Lyme or other coinfections. I never had a known tick bite or bullseye rash, but bacterial DNA of borrelia and ehrlichia were found in my lab sample. Clearly, I was infected somewhere, somehow.

If you have not yet had a Lyme Western blot, you should get one. You can get one through Labcorp to start with. If you have ANY positive bands, check here to find out what those positive bands indicate. Regular doctors will go by the CDC guidelines which say 5 bands out of specific ones have to be positive. That is incorrect.
Posted 5/16/2018 8:36 AM (GMT -5)

Aerose91 said...
I'm certain this is the case with me, too. We had cats with fleas growing up and though i didn't get officially sick until 25, there was always something different about me. Poor memory, frequently sick, terrible hangovers, slow to recover from workouts etc. Looking back, this has always been brewing

This is so close to my own story. I think I got bartonella and lyme when I was very young. I had low-level symptoms for years, a mix of stuff like concentration issues, vicious hangovers, anxiety, insomnia, fatigue. It would always wax/wane in cycles too. I had a feeling of impending doom. Lo and behold at 24 is when I fell truly sick (maybe I caught a flu that helped trigger the underlying infections), and I became bedridden and all the previous symptoms amplified 100 fold.

As to the original question, it's hard to know for certain when you may have been infected. But yes, it's highly possible it originated in your youth, possibly from the fleas.
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