tick bites, borreliose, XMRV

My life had been kind of on hold for a few months last winter and into the spring. I had two tick bites last year, one in June and another one in September. I always have a bad reaction to tick bites in the sense that it takes months for a bite to heal. I guess I'm allergic to something in the tick saliva or something. After the September bite, though, I started having weird symptoms like brain fog, falling asleep in the middle of the day sitting upright in my chair, swollen ankles, some mild joint pain, so I called my doctor and got a prescription for six weeks of doxycycline, the standard treatment in Austria for Lyme disease.

I started to feel better within a couple of days of taking this medication, but I thought I should maybe get a blood test, so I went to another doctor who is closer to where I live. I had already been taking the antibiotics for at least a week by the time I saw her. This doctor sent me for a blood test and for ultrasound and x-ray of my joints, but the blood test was negative for borreliose (the bacteria that causes Lyme disease), and it and the x-ray and ultrasound gave no indication of arthritic inflammation. The doctor said that, in fact, there was no evidence that I had ever had Lyme disease, that I was just getting old, and that I should do yoga or some other exercise. I suppose it could be possible that I started to have Lyme disease after the September tick bite, but that the antibiotics took care of it before the blood test.

Well I have a friend who definitely has Lyme disease, and she sees a doctor who treats patients according to the ILADS protocols, and who sends bloodwork to Germany for special analyses that are not performed in Austria, so I thought, just to be on the safe side, I should also go to him. In the analysis from Germany, there was again no evidence whatsoever of any borreliose bacteria in my system, but there was one indicator - the CD57 - that was very low, indicating that chronic Lyme disease should be suspected, so the doctor started me on Stage I of the ILADS antibiotics protocol - a three-month regimen of a combination of antibiotics. At the end of this time, my CD57 indicator had risen a little bit, but was still well below the level at which I could be considered "cured" of chronic Lyme disease, so the doctor started me on Stage II of the ILADS antibiotics protocol - a two-month regimen of stronger antibiotics. The next blood test showed basically no improvement in the CD57 indicator and the doctor's conclusion was that my body had somehow failed me because the CD57 indicator had not increased in response to the treatment - a strange conclusion, since no one really knows what this indicator means, whether high or low.

A couple of weeks before ending the Stage II medication, I learned that a new retrovirus has been discovered, XMRV, which also causes a low CD57 result. Since antibiotics have no effect whatsoever on viruses, I wondered if I might have the XMRV virus and not Lyme disease. As XMRV is a newly-discovered virus, little is known about its effects. Very few labs are capable of testing for it, but I found a lab in Belgium that was able to perform the test for me. They were also able to do a PCR test for borreliose, which is the only type of test that can confirm, definitvely, if one has ever had the borreliose bacteria in their system. Both tests were negative. What a relief! And if I ever find out what a low CD57 count means, I will let you know.