Lymes Disease/Chemo Induced Symptoms

I know that several of my readers in NY and Maine, as well as NC have had a run- in with Lymes Disease.  Some of the same symptoms that have shown up in this last week attributed to Chemo Induced Periperhal Neuropathy are similar to the damage from the insidious spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi .

This is of interest to me as well as some of the medicos here at Duke who have asked me about my Lymes
experience.

After the jump there is an email I sent to my sister Laurie pre MDS diagnosis for a report she was doing on Lymes back in 2009, and a few comments from the present.

follow over the jump


Letter to my sister:



Laurie,

In the fall of 2009  I tested positive for Lymes Disease, and so began a
study into the origins and treatment of this malady.

The diagnosis came as a bit of a relief, for it explained the symptoms that
I had been attributing to "aging pains", the geezer's catch-all for any
aches and pains. The symptoms beyond the physical ( like
arthritis,bursitis,joint pain, fibromyalgia etc,) included brain fog, short
attention span, short term memory loss, rushing sound in ears, and general
malaise.  When I experienced a "bloom", the fatigue was debilitating, and is
often described by Lymies as "being hit by a truck".  Some mornings , after
two cups of coffee, I would fall asleep in the chair while putting on my
boots. Bang my elbow, and it would trigger a bloom in my knees and shoulder
as the critters awoke and started chowing down on my collagen.

The insidious spirochete, a one-celled corkscrew is perhaps one of the
oldest creatures on the planet, and is a close cousin to malaria and
syphilis.

The vector is a tick, , usually a deer tick, and the sign of infection is a
red bull's-eye around the site of the bite. I don't know when I first was
exposed to Lymes, as ticks  were a part of my youth playing and camping in the
woods, and I recall many in the 70's in college, but cannot recall the red
bull's-eye. In 2009 though, ,it presented, and prompted me to have the blood
test.

There is no sure-fire cure for this disease at present, and it is
controversial, often overlooked and/or  misdiagnosed mainly because big
pharma has no patented drug to remedy Lymes. About 30% of the population
respond to treatment with Doxycyclin, and other antibiotics. Fortunately my
last blood test came back Lymes free, but it was after several cycles of
antibiotics, and the dietary and  lifestyle changes I had made.

 I adopted the attitude that if I had a parasite, I would become an inhospitable host,
and endeavored to eliminate anything that they liked to eat. I also began a treatment
protocol involving vitamins and dietary supplements with names right out of
the Hogwarts dispensary, stuff like catsclaw, resveratrol,  andrographus,
and good old sarsaparilla,

I believe these helped, but the doses required were both costly and had
unpleasant side effects.

While I did not avail myself of any massage therapy while I had Lymes, It
was recommended, and I believe that  some sessions with a certified
Lymphedemea Therapist would have alleviated some of the symptoms.

The CDC http://www.cdc.gov/lyme/ still has their head in the sand about Lymes, as you can see from the link to this stale stats page at their site http://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/index.html  When I went to our local Lymes MD, he said he had seen more cases in  just his office that month alone, than reported for the whole state of NC for a year.


Hope this helps for your report,


C

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Update 2013

After my stint  in the hospital, and all the IV antibiotics I have had, I now test negative

for Lymes.  But as my MDS was presenting, I falsely attributed many of the symptoms to Lymes.
I have blood labs from 2009, and my counts are low, in fact technically neutrapenic.

But we were attributing this to the Lymes.

Here is an article from Brown University http://med.brown.edu/neurology/articles/sr21608.pdf
with a list of the Neurological Complications of Lymes Disease.

Here is a bulletin from the National Cancer Institute on Chemotherapy-induced Peripheral Neuropathy.
NCI Bulletin

And here,just to muddy the waters, is a Mayo Clinic article on the causes of peripheral neuropathy, .
It shows causes from Alcohol to Vitamin deficiency. Mayo clinic article

Truth is, even without the complication of the Lymes, I had probably been living with the MDS for a long time as my marrow slowly failed, and the Lymes Disease just exacerbated the condition.


Ticks, the vector.

The Bullseye