Treatment (part 1)

Today I’ll give an overview of the treatments I’ve done. Tomorrow I’ll go more in depth, talk about what I’m still doing, and give recommendations.

Also, I will not mention any of my Doctors by name due to the controversy surrounding the treatment of Lyme. However if you want to know more you can contact me directly.

To be honest, when I first found out I had Lyme I really had no idea what I was up against, so I didn’t really panic. In fact, my first response was relief....because I FINALLY had an answer to many of my questions at the time. 

At the beginning of my diagnosis we took things slow. I started lots of supplements and natural things to try and boost my immune system for what lay ahead. 

My specialist at the time, who diagnosed me, was unprepared to put his practice at risk, so he couldn’t do any treatments beyond that. So he gave me a couple options. 

1. I could meet with a Doctor in upstate New York (5 hours from me), who would do a very intense regiment of antibiotics. 

2. I could meet with a naturopathic doctor in Mississauga (5 hours from me). And he would to Bio-resonance treatment.

We were nervous about the intensity of the antibiotics, and so we decided to give the other option a try.

A couple weeks later I went down to meet the naturopathic doctor. He had given up his medical licence in ordering continue treating Lyme. The first appointment consisted entirely of him getting to know me and my history, and him explaining his treatment. 

The second appointment we had another meeting, and his staff ran all kinds of tests. These tests determined a lot of food sensitivities, Lyme bacteria, what co-infections I had, the amount of parasites, mold sensitivity, environmental sensitivities, chemical sensitivities, and more.

The third appointment consisted of another meeting as well as a couple more tests. At this appointment he determined that I was too complex to treat, largely due to my psychiatric symptoms, and so I went home.  

A week later I met an environmental doctor in Ottawa. She ran more tests, including blood work...which she sent to the best labs in the world (California and Germany), so that she could begin my antibiotics. She ran some more food and environmental tests too.

Shortly after I began antibiotics, orally and intravenously. I also began a supplement and vitamin IV 3x per week. The IVs were supposed to help me actually absorb the good stuff (since I was not absorbing orally). My first vitamin IV was extremely painful...for a couple reasons:

1. My muscles were SO deficient in magnesium, that they were literally grabbing at the magnesium.

2. I am allergic to nickel (which is in the regular needles).

We didn’t confirm the nickel allergy until the second IV. At which point we switched to special catheter needless....which are much thicker, and harder to put in. Ouch.

They made my acupuncture and dry needling (which I was still doing for my concussion) seem like a piece of cake.n

For the next number of months we played around with lots of different antibiotics and also vitamin and supplement mixes on top. My veins were becoming so terrible. Some were actually hiding, and some collapse or became badly scarred. 

This is when we began the lengthy battle to get a PICC line placed.

Technically, if you are getting IVs for any more than 10 days you should have a PICC. But due the controversy of my case (Lyme) this was very hard to actually accomplish. Doctors in Ottawa flat out refused to do it for me. Months later a Doctor in Perth Ontario finally agreed to do it. 

This made my, now daily, IVs much more bearable. But by the time I got it I was very near to death’s door. None of the treatments were helping, and I was only getting sicker and sicker. My body was so inflamed that it was no longer even trying to fight the bacteria anymore. I was also loosing weight at a crazy speed due to both Lyme and my eating disorder, so I ended up in the hospital. 

I fought daily for the first week just to keep my PICC in, because I had fought so so hard to get it in the first place. But once the hospital’s extremely faulty test results came in they wouldn’t let me continue my antibiotics. And so I agreed to get it taken out (much to their absolute delight). Since they were refusing antibiotics anyway it actually posed a risk for infection (which would go directly to my heart). So they removed it. At the time that PICC was my only sign of hope, because to me it signified a battle I had won (getting it in), and it meant treatment. But the hospital didn’t care, and they were not sensitive to my feelings. The nurse taking it out was way too eager. I was devastated.

For the next few months i was in the hospital and didn’t do any Lyme treatment. 

In the end of November 2017 they discharged me. And I went deeper and deeper into despair. It truly felt like I had exhausted all of my options. 

In mid January I was planning to meet another natural type Doctor in Toronto, but at the last minute was advised against that, so I didn’t end up going.

At the end of January I flew with my Dad to Edmonton where I jumped right into an extremely intense treatment regiment.

The unique part of this treatment was the Hyperbaric oxygen chamber. I also took a ton of supplements, and did many other treatments to try and combat some of the intense flares caused by the intense battle going on in my body.

Now I’m in Ottawa doing lots of detox, supplements, and psychiatric related treatments.

As I said at the beginning of this post, tomorrow I will talk about what exactly my treatments were, and what they did.

So I’ll leave it at that for now.