BACK ON BIAXIN

Looking back at my last post, I am struck by how peaceful it
was, and by how much has changed in the nine weeks since. It was just about
then that I agreed to do another test for Lyme because I should have been done
with the Shoemaker protocol and off most of my supplements by then, and I
wasn’t. Dr. Ross said active Lyme might possibly be the culprit. This was
exciting in exactly one way—that there now is a non-antibody test for Lyme with
80% accuracy.

Before the blood draw, I had to I stop taking my one-drop/day
dose of Samento, a Lyme-killing herb, and a couple other herbs I’d been taking
that had an anti-bacterial effect.

And so began my further descent. I slept less, tried to
solve it by detoxing more, got nowhere but exhausted. I worried the lurking
sinus infection, which I’d been trying to get rid of for six months, was
causing all my trouble. I redoubled my efforts to clear it out, which took more
time from my day.

More than ever, I felt from the moment I got out of bed that
I was racing the clock to get through all my medical tasks-- injections to
powders to pills to enemas. And now the nasal sprays and essential oils on
q-tips inserted into my sinuses, which I found myself doing at 11pm, because I
couldn’t get to it sooner, which is hardly a way to induce a good night’s
sleep.

I did the blood draw, the lab mixed up my test results, I had
to stay off my herbs for two more weeks until I the replacement test kit
arrived.

And then came the day I lifted my arms to braid my hair, and
I felt an all-too familiar feeling: that horrible, domineering, sluggishness I
lived with for eight years before my diagnosis. My arms were made of liquid
lead and I just couldn’t lift them for more than five seconds.

“This feels like the bad-old days,” I thought.

Mind you, I was still going running and to dance class and
doing my grocery shopping by foot, but the absolute feeling of Lyme took over
my body from time to time. Sometimes it was a just a passing moment, a few
mornings it was a good two hours. There is tiredness, there is sickness—such as
food-poisoning or the flu—and there is Lyme. It has its own particular feel.
You can say “flu-like”, but the feeling, for me, is subtly and entirely
distinct from the flu. It has a particular flavor, its own color, as unique as
the face of an old friend. You may not have seen that face for a few years, but
you would not call it by any other name.

I put myself back on Samento—one drop, then two drops per
day—felt wiped out enough to call it a die-off reaction.

So I was in Dr. Ross’s office last Monday declaring that I
could not wait six more weeks for test results. (Yes, this amazing new Lyme
test takes time!) I also told him just how stubborn this sinus infection was. I
left the appointment with a prescription for Biaxin (generic name Clarythrosmycin
for all you anti-biotics geeks), which would treat the sinus infection and the
Lyme.

Dr. Ross reassured me that people in my situation bounce
back quickly—I haven’t gone back to square one. And this week, despite the
waves of nausea and other die-off unpleasantness, I’ve felt a bit better than
the week before.