Signed up to post this. So I have been on this journey with my daughter for the last 7 years, she is now 25, but only got a Lyme diagnosis less than 2 years ago, has been suffering since she was 18.
It’s not just ticks, mosquitos and spiders can apparently carry the bacteria (there is not a lot of consensus about the causes of Lyme, there is the bacterial school of thought and a viral theory). This if the fringe of science, theory’s matter but results matter more.
My daughter had a range of symptoms, fatigue, body aches, circulation issues her feet would change colour blue, red, purple, brain fog.
She had been 5 years on this path trying to deal with this, before the Lyme test was done (we live in nz which lyme is rare, and she likely caught it in Australia which doesn’t acknowledge its existence). Anyway we headed to Germany for hyperthermia treatment. It wasn’t cheap for us, and almost an act of faith in choosing this. I had reservations, at the frontier of medicine everything looks different. People are pursuing options that are unconventional, because the conventional options have been exhausted. At some point everything that is considered mainstream now, once looked unconventional. I know that could be used to justify anything. We spent 3 weeks at St George clinic in Germany.
The theory of Lyme is that is a really slowly replicating bacteria, once every 24 hours vs 20 minutes typical for most. It does respond to antibiotics but the slow replication rate means you would need antibiotics in your system for a much much longer period to have the same number of kill opportunities (it is during replication that bacteria will absorb antibiotics and be killed as I understand it). Roughly you would need antibiotics for 3x24 as long as a typical antibiotic treatment (over 2 years of antibiotics which would ruin the rest of your body).
The hyperthermia treatment is intense, it is designed to mimic a fever. One of our bodies approaches to killing bacteria, is getting them hot enough to rupture their cells.
It wasnt an easy or a quick fix after treatment, which was disheartening at times. But a year on she has just noticed she is feeling better, has little to no pain and just the other day took a run along the beach.
Anyway I just wanted to endorse a plan you were already thinking about. I acknowledge that a chronic health issue is hard, hard in a way that those of us who a generally healthy can’t even comprehend.
I wish you all the best