Saturday before last (20th), I started feeling bad. Nothing terrible – just didn’t feel good and felt like I was starting with a sore throat. On Sunday, I woke up with a definite sore throat and had been waking up in the night with the feeling like I had sand in the back of my throat (hate that feeling!).

On Monday, I went to my doctor because I was going out of town for work at the end of the week and I didn’t want to have a sinus infection for a plane ride! So at this point, it was just sore throat, feeling like I had “gunk” in the back of my throat, beginning to lose my voice and my neck had been hurting (which I continually attributed to sleeping on it wrong). No fever.

They swabbed me for strep – negative. She looked at my throat and said it looked perfectly fine. So I’m like great, then why do I feel like this? She gave me a Z-pack and sent me on my way.

I got the prescription filled and then started thinking about how much I really didn’t want to take another antibiotic! Plus, if I’m being honest, it freaks me out a bit. This is how I felt when the Lyme really started kicking up – like I had a cold all of the time and I was exhausted. And Zithromax is one of the medications my Lyme doctor uses sometimes instead of Doxycycline.

I decided not to take the medication and just hold out to see if my immune system would handle it. I convinced myself it was allergies and started taking Zyrtec. The sand in the throat feeling continued a few more nights. And then this past weekend, I started coughing – not a lot and kind of random. Today, I haven’t been able to stop coughing and my head feels clogged. And my voice is nice and raspy!!

So I just gave in and took the stupid medication. I held out 9 days – you would think if my immune system was going to kick in and help me out, it would have done it by now.

Please, please, please don’t let me herx on this. Let the Lyme really be gone and for this to JUST be a sinus infection.

I made it 25 days without any antibiotics. Maybe after this five day course, it will be a long time before I have to take another one!!

So it’s now been a full week since I ended all of my antibiotics. Right now, I’m just continuing with my thryoid and adrenal meds, probiotics and magnesium. Every other day, I take biotin and vitamin D and when I remember, I take my multi. I have to admit, it has been great to not have to choke down 20-30 pills a day! I may end up adding back some of the supplements at some point but for right now, I’m happy where I’m at.

Another thing that happened this week is we think we may have discovered another food allergy. I’ve read a lot about cross reactions with gluten where your body recognizes other things as gluten as well and you react in the same way. Well, we went to eat Mexican over the weekend (I had my usual safe food of bean dip with chips fried in a separate fryer) and within just a few minutes, my stomach was cramping and I had intense nausea (to the point of finally giving up and taking Zofran several hours after it started). I didn’t think much of it then – just figured maybe my body was still adjusting to being off of antibiotics.

On Sunday night, we made a gluten free pizza. I ate one piece and within about ten minutes, here comes the nausea again. So we started trying to find the correlation between the two and the only thing that was the same was the cheese! With that, it essentially ends any eating out for me as well as many of the “convenience” type foods I was eating like pizza. Probably not such a bad thing. 😉 I’m going to cut it out for a bit and see what happens.

Right now, it doesn’t seem to be all dairy as my husband has been cooking vegetables with butter and there hasn’t been an issue with it. But I haven’t tried any other dairy products. I may attempt that this weekend – we’ll see!

I literally knock on wood every time before I say this, but I’ve been feeling good the past two days. I had some brain fog issues on Tuesday but I just tried not to focus on it too much and that night, I came home and was in bed by 8:00p and asleep shortly after. I slept until the alarm went off at 6:45a the next morning. It made such a difference in how I felt the next day, I’m going to continue trying to do that.

While my head was all foggy, I was looking up cures for brain fog – not really expecting to find anything but just to see what was being talked about in regards to it. It helped me to see that what I describe as brain fog is what others describe too – so I’m at least using the right term when I tell doctors that. The interesting part is that many articles also referenced different causes of brain fog including thyroid, adrenal fatigue and gluten intolerance. Um, check, check and check!

Many of my Lyme symptoms disappeared a long time ago. The symptoms I’ve not been able to kick have been the brain fog and the fatigue. With the fatigue, I think it will just take time because my body has been through so much. But what if the brain fog issue is really from my thyroid not being optimized or from the adrenal fatigue or from the gluten intolerance and cross reaction to other foods as well? What if it’s not from the Lyme at all and I’ve actually been done with all of the Lyme symptoms for a while? I still think about when my head was the clearest it has ever been since all this started and that was when I was in the hospital for my gallbladder and given stress doses of Cortisol for my adrenals. I think it’s too early for me to attempt to answer that one, and maybe I’ll never be able to but it’s interesting nonetheless. Yet another theory of mine – as if I need any more! haha

Also, my period started today. In the past, the few days leading up to my period and the actual week of my period have been pure hell. But other than the brain fog on Tuesday, I’ve been okay. It scares me to even admit it because I’m terrified it will be taken away from me again. But I have to remember to stay positive with this. I keep reminding myself that I didn’t herx at all with the Doxy or Rocephin this time and the herxes I thought I was having with the herbals were likely allergic reactions!

So far, so good. I hope this continues. I’ve been praying for a strong immune system and a healthy body. I hope my prayers will be answered!

Now off to bed to make sure I get plenty of rest again tonight!