Today I had another visit with my Lyme doctor. There’s not much to tell as far as improvement in symptoms is concerned, or so I thought.

Increasing Dosage

First things first. When she heard that my symptoms still aren’t improving, she said we could increase the dosage of the Rocephin. Good! She said that you can have problems with the gallbladder on higher dosages and it seems to happen more in women. So to attempt to protect my gallbladder, I need to eat as low fat as possible with no greasy foods, etc.

This should be one interesting diet. No sugar, no gluten and now low fat too. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that eating out is about to be impossible. In fact, eating period may be impossible! haha No gluten and no sugar are fairly easy since it’s basically the low carb I’ve been doing all along. But low carb is high fat so if I have to cut the fat, I technically need to add back carbs….since I’m not just going to survive on protein! But I have to add back carbs without gluten. We’ll see how this goes.

I have enough Rocephin through next Tuesday so she said to start doubling up now and they’ll call in the increase in the meds. I haven’t had the best of luck with them calling in ANYTHING to the pharmacy so I think I’ll wait to make sure it’s approved before I start doubling what I have left.

My Heart

After we talked about my progress, or lack thereof, she did a quick exam. When she was listening to my heart, she paused for a long time. Then she asked me how much caffeine I drink. When I replied I had not had anything other than water since November, she got a perplexed look on her face and went back to listening again.

She finally stepped back and wanted to know if I could feel the palpitations. My response was “what palpitations?” She said they were quite obvious so she was surprised I couldn’t feel them. My first thought was that it was just tachycardia, which I’ve had issues with off and on for over ten years. But she said no, this wasn’t just fast, the rhythm was off.

I did let her know about the chest type pain I have been feeling on the left and that it was twisting around to my back sometimes. It isn’t constant and doesn’t seem to have a rhyme or reason to it. She became even more concerned upon hearing this. I have mentioned it at other appointments but that was with the NP who always brushed it off.

I told her I would make an appointment with my cardiologist to follow up and she said no, it couldn’t wait and I had to see someone familiar with Lyme. Turns out that Lyme can affect your heart as well. At this point I’m thinking there’s not anything it can’t affect!

She left the room and came back with an appointment to see a cardiologist the next day. I was impressed and scared. This was obviously serious if she made the appointment for me.

So tomorrow afternoon, I will be seeing a new cardiologist.

The Tally

And I just realized it’s the end of the month so time for a new tally. It’s jumped quite a bit since last month – in fact, it’s almost doubled!

Total billed to date: $40,482.02. My insurance has covered all but $1,365. But I also don’t yet know what my co-pays are going to be on the IV meds. I could be getting a bill later for that.