#notalwaysincontrol

After a year and a half battle with lyme and suffering through intravenous doxycycline I thought I was about to run through the finish line until I started experiencing an increase in my pain and symptoms. Early signs of bartonellosis include fever, fatigue, headache, poor appetite, and an unusual streaked rash that resembles “stretch marks” from pregnancy. Swollen glands are typical, especially around the head, neck and arms. Patients with bartonelliosis report more neurological symptoms and are more likely to have visited a neurologist than members of the general population.  Some common symptoms include blurred vision, numbness in the extremities, memory loss, balance problems, headaches, ataxia (unsteady gait), and tremors. Bartonellosis also sometimes triggers psychiatric manifestations.

(never let someone tell you what you feel or how you feel. only you know that. a neurologist once said to me before my diagnosis that I need a psych consult and should try popping pills before exploring more testing...needless to say lyme had already gotten to my brain and bartonella was already in my spinal fluid but what does the teen know? everyone’s quick to pull the wanting attention card but maybe there are diseases manifesting in your body progressing as time goes on. ya mental illnesses can make common symptoms up, but you know real pain from ego pain. don’t let anyone talk down to you, even if they are a doctor; because, 1 time out of 10 they’ll be wrong. I was that 1). curse you mr. kretsch writing in my yearbook “be an outlier!” jk ily.

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And this is why I want to go to medical school:

“More research needs to be done to establish the role of ticks in spreading the disease. In addition, a recent study suggests that bartonella may be passed from mother to unborn child (perinatal transmission).” -lymedisease.org 

(does this mean if I want to have kids, I am unwillingly birthing children into living with lyme? living with bartonella? my babies won’t even get to look me in my eyes before their immune systems start to battle to beat this thing? or does this mean only if i have active lyme and bartonella will they get this? but will there even be a specific test that could tell me that?)

“However, the clinical implications of many of these human infections are poorly understood, and it is possible that some of the species are non-pathogenic, at least in immunocompetent people. Until around 15 years ago, only three human diseases were recognized as clearly attributable to Bartonella organisms.”

“The clinical manifestations of tick-transmitted bartonellosis are essentially unknown. They may resemble cat scratch disease, take other clinical forms, or be benign. It is also unclear if Bartonella co-infection with other tick-transmitted organisms can result in more serious illness; some of the few reported cases of concurrentB. burgdorferi and B. henselae infection in the medical literature appear to suggest this could be the case. Thus, it may be prudent to consider the possibility of Bartonella co-infection in cases of poorly resolving or apparent relapsing Lyme disease.” -http://columbia-lyme.org/patients/tbd_bartonella.html

(*if you can’t shake the symptoms of lyme and have relapsed after treatment, it could be bartonella or another co-infection causing the problems not lyme itself. always fix the root causing the problem if you want the problem to go away=eliminate co-infections.)

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When every article you read about a disease that manifested itself into every organ, body system, and brain that you have and that on top of that the tick was infected with a co-infection that resides in every blood vessel of your body and the website says “more research needs to be done”, “the clinical manifestations are unclear”, “research is currently be conducted on mice to monitor the effects of treatment,” one tends to feel useless. scared. and hurt. hurt that our government has the power to withhold doctors from exercising research and performing clinical trials to uncover the truth behind lyme and tick-borne illnesses (co-infections). 

When I get scared about my future I just try to remind myself of what it will look like on the pretty side:

Integrative Medicine: “It combines conventional Western medicine with alternative or complementary treatments, such as herbal medicine,acupuncture, massage, biofeedback, yoga, and stress reduction techniques -- all in the effort to treat the whole person. Proponents prefer the term "complementary" to emphasize that such treatments are used with mainstream medicine, not as replacements or alternatives.” -Duke Integrative Medicine Program 

“The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.”~Thomas Edison