Treatment plateau

I've been reminded that my last post is three months old, so here's a quick update.

I've been feeling like crap.

I'm off the spring/summer regimen of Biaxin, Plaquenil, and Tetracycline, which I was s-o-o-o glad to stop. My body needed a break. The Tetracycline messes with my stomach, and one of the other two was giving me hot flashes.

After two weeks off, and a five day period during which I felt good, I'm now on Moxatag, an oral time-release penicillin. And a couple weeks ago diflucan was added to the mix again.

I started seeing my lyme doc in August 2008, and have been on oral antibiotics and brethren ever since. Overall, I am perhaps slightly better than I was 14 months ago, but really about the same. It's been up and down, and I've killed stuff, according to the herxes I've been through. But it seems to be a stalemate at this point.

I am continuing with my LLMD and the abx, but also pursuing other treatment options. I've bought a Rife machine and have begun using it. I read Bryan Rosner's book When Antibiotics Fail, which is all about the how and why of Rife. Very useful book. I was surprised.

In evaluating Rife technology, I decided that it was probably safe enough. No one knows for sure, but people have exposed themselves to the EMF for years and suffer no apparent side effects. And keep in mind, I'm not comparing it to a pristine mountain meadow. I'm comparing it to harsh antibiotics and untreated, or under-treated, lyme disease.

But does it do anything? Well, how have I been treated this past year? Clinically. I know I have lyme. And the Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction is well-documented for lyme disease. So, assuming I can tell a herx apart from daily lyme, which I mostly can, then if I herx, I must have killed some lyme. This has been the modus operandi for the past year, and the killin' was done with drugs.

So, if I can get the same herx reaction with a Rife machine, I think it tells me that at its most basic, Rife therapy is able to kill some lyme bacteria. Just like antibiotics.

Without going into the whole thing here, the premise is that Rife has a serious advantage over drugs in that unlike drugs, it doesn't cause lyme to flee to cystic form. So, the story goes, there's a much better chance of reducing the bacterial load over time than with antibiotics.

I started very carefully with my new GB-4000 frequency generator and SR4 amplifier, using the lowest power setting, and just doing three anecdotally popular frequencies for one minute each. That's it. I didn't expect to feel anything during the treatment, and I didn't. But ten minutes later, I felt very altered mentally. I often have a low-level anxiety, and some low-level obsessive thinking, or actions (like I've pulled most of one eyebrow out these past few bad months -- I don't know why). But this was different. Same idea, but from zero to very high anxiety within a minute. I couldn't rest, thinking there was *something* I had yet to do. Something, something. My mind was racing, and I was getting more confused by the minute. To the reader the connection may seem obvious -- that the machine had fried some bugs in my brain. But to my confused brain it was a small revelation. The feeling passed in an hour. The next day I felt fine, and the day after I herxed. Fairly mild, but definitely a herx.

So, for the next session I did the same protocol, but doubled the duration, and increased the power slightly. Same as before, only a little stronger herx. Very strong for about three hours, on the third day after treatment.

At this point I was feeling like this machine seems to do something, which is all I've been able to say for antibiotics. Time for a bigger test.

The third session was a full suite of frequencies, nearly fifty I think, for five minutes, at a 70% power setting. I didn't notice the anxiety during the session, but the third day was wonderfully bad. It was so bad I couldn't think clearly enough to tell if this was the herx I had been waiting for (it was). I've always had chemical sensitivities, and they've gotten worse by an order of magnitude since I've had lyme. I could work as a drug-sniffing dog. I can smell *everything*, and unfortunately, to my lyme brain, most things in the manmade world smell like crap. Even some "natural" things, like smells of cooking, of onions and garlic. A wood fire. These things always hit me like a physical assault, but this day was the worst I can ever remember. Brain fried, eyes burning and red, feeling all day like there was no place I could go. No air to breathe. House stinks. Can't open window, because several houses away someone has a fire in their fireplace, and I can smell the smoke. Plus, the sound of the cars on the street are way amplified and the damn birds won't shut up. You get the idea. I was just a real sad case.

Another symptom that presented worse than ever was the startling, the twitching. These random whole-body jerks. Sometimes it's a sound, or the motion of a car on the street, or whatever. Sometimes it's nothing. That day I just sat and flinched, deafened by the ringing in my ears.

That was yesterday. This morning wasn't shaping up any better, but I improved as the day wore on. I was even able to sit in a quiet corner of a restaurant to have lunch with my dad. I wore earplugs. Tonight I did the same Rife treatment once again. So, perhaps tomorrow will be a decent day. And probably the next day ..... will pass.

They say that like any lyme treatment, Rife takes time. I expect to try this for one year before deciding if it's working. During this time I expect to feel pretty bad most of the time. Which is good. If I'm not herxing, the machine isn't doing anything.

So, don't ask me how I'm feeling. Not until next year.