Questions about Lyme / Western Blot.

Hello,

I’ve suspected Lyme disease since about 2002 or 2003 when I started feeling terribly fatigued. However, I was active and a bit younger so the fatigue would come and go. The Eliza test came back negative so I shrugged it off, even after my doctor told me there were a lot of false negatives on the test. Long story short, I recently got either infected or re-infected. I had the whole deal, huge bullseye on my back, joint pain (initially doctors thought it was a herniated disk, turned out it was Lyme.), flu like symptoms, etc. All the blood tests have come back and my titer was the 2nd highest my doctor’s office had ever seen.

Anyhow, here are my questions. Doxy was effective for a while, but the disease came back and Doxy was slightly effective, but I got worse and worse. Including significant problems with my short term memory, something I can only describe as mind-fog, and just plain fatigue. So after trying many different things, I’m finally on Rocephin. It has been two weeks and I’ve felt pretty terrible for most of the treatment. Yesterday I felt a bit better, and today is okay – but for the most part not great. I have two doctors, my general practitioner who sees A LOT of Lyme cases thinks I should be doing 2mg of Rocephin a day; my infection diseases doctor has me on one. What’s normal for this, does anyone know?

Secondly, I recently got back my Western Blot and it showed strands P23, P39, and P41. Two of them directly linked to Bb. I really don’t know what to take of this. I was told that the Western Blot would let me know if the disease was chronic or not. I have not yet had a chance to talk to my doctor so I’m wondering if someone could let me know how to tell.

Lastly, I’ve heard differing reports on if alcohol affects the Rocephin. Does anyone know for sure?

Thanks in advance!

It's not a good idea to drink when taking abx. If you want to know for sure about alcohol-drug interactions, ask your pharmacist.

WesternBlot (WB) Lyme tests look for two types of antibodes for Lyme, IgM and IgG. IgM is thought to be an indication of an acute response, therefore would be elevated shortly after becoming infected with Lyme (some LLMD's think chronically elevated IgM may be an indication of chronic neuroborreliosis; my LLMD believes a chronically elevated IgM is more indicative of a chronically active Lyme infection than IgG because Lyme is always changing it's outer surface protein configurations to evade the immune system, therefore the immune system has to keep making new antibodies, which will be of the IgM type initially). IgG is thought to be an indication of past exposure and/or chronic infection. If you have a copy of your WB results, you should see a separate list of bands for IgM and IgG.

I hope this helps - good luck,

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-Razzle