Lyme Disease is such a complex disease it is almost too hard to grasp what it does in your (my) body. There are many layers of the disease and symptoms.
The spirochetes entered my body, and I started to feel sick. I went to a doctor. Many doctors. This is where the information got twisted and greatly misleading. As I have posted, I saw many doctors over many years before it was 'proven' on paper that I really did have Lyme disease. I went through twenty years or more of simple to very complex symptoms and help was askew and discouraging. The more doctors I went to, the more I felt I was never going to get better, and that I was just a mess by design.
Over the years, and with a LOT of research and the help of Lyme specialists I have begun to understand the complexities of the disease. Which by the way, I would like to refer to as an infection, not a disease. It may be called many different diseases because as it progresses it becomes what doctors have recognized for years as other things. I, for one, do not appreciate the word disease. Lyme is an infection. Period. If you will bear with me, I will call spade a spade and refer to Lyme as an infection.
With that out of the way, when the infection was delivered into my body, it was very happy. It found it's way through my blood, muscles and finally to my nervous system, where it kind of settled down, and made an home. Not just one home, but many, as it slowly reproduced. This infection is one of the slowest to reproduce of any infection, including TB, which is very slow. As the spirochete enjoyed living off my nerve cells, my body began to malfunction.
The spirochete is intracellular. That means it can actually enter into a cell and live in it. It makes a meal out of the innards, and then the cell wall collapses around it, and it stays there as long as it wants. When the cell wall collapse over the spirochete, the antibodies can no longer find it, as they think the cell is a regular cell, not a home for a spirochete. This is one way the spirochete lives. The infection even at this stage can cause as many symptoms as it please. Depending on where it decides to live, it causes the symptoms that result. In my case, it seems to me the infection is in my brain, spine, and nerve cells, causing problems with my nervous system and muscular movements. Not to mention tics, spasms, unbearable joint pain, burning sensations, and many other symptoms. At this point of my infection though, I believe the spirochetes are everywhere, to a lesser degree. As antibodies to search for the infection, they find toxins from the moving, hiding spirochetes. The result is tremendous inflammation. Again, wherever the spirochetes, and or co-infections reside equals what my symptoms are, and how decreased my abilities become.
Spirochetes also form colonies, covered by a protective covering called bio-films. These bio-films again protect the spirochetes from being detected by antibodies. Combine this with any other-co-infections I may have, and no wonder I have been a complete mess.
Having been treated, in the past, by only oral antibiotics, I experienced a tremendous amount of herxing. This is when the antibiotics find the spirochetes which are out of hiding, and vulnerable to attack. When they are killed, they give off toxins which cause more inflammation, which cause a great deal of pain, nausea, brain fog, extreme fatigue, etc.. All Lyme infection symptoms, times ten. It is the only way to get to the other side.
I have been blessed to now have a treatment plan which takes all this into consideration and supplies my body with antibiotics, on and off, and always with supplements which replicate and replace the damaged cell innards. This way, as the spirochete and their toxins are kicked out of my body, (their home), the new cells that replace the damaged ones are healthy. The herxing is less severe in this case.
This is the top of the iceberg of the Lyme infection and co-infection habits. I believe I am close to the truth in the description. As I go along I learn more and more. I have an insatiable desire to know all I can about these infections, and to share what I find. So, more to come, but right now I have tired myself out.
