Return of the Herx

There is a strange thing that happens when you begin Lyme treatment – you get worse. It's called the Jarisch-Herxheimer (J-H) Reaction and it actually makes sense. As the anti-biotic starts to work its magic on the little spirochete demons that have invaded your body, they die and break off from your cartilage, nerves, and brain where they have been comfortably been fruitful and multiplying. This releases more toxins into your blood stream, and boy do you ever feel it.

So what happens is that as of yesterday and a little bit less the day before my body started to react with all kinds of intestinal joy. No doubt this was also part of the intense doxycycline flowing through my system. Then I have begun to get more and more exhausted. You know, just like back in July when I was on doxy as a "precaution" since the doc was rather clear about his opinion that Lyme was not it. So why would I start to feel increasingly worse after taking antibiotics? Hmmm… Seems to be the opposite effect of the good old flu. Oh yeah, then there was the Erythema Migrans rash. But I'm not bitter.

So today I hit my wall at 2 pm, but much, much, much harder than usual. I came home early and then went to bed. I slept really hard for three hours and would have gone much longer if it was not for the little high energy physics experiment named Alex who was riding his little toy Tonka garbage truck and singing "Big Red Car" by the Wiggles and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" as loud as he could. Cute indeed. But not helpful to said paralysis!

This kind of sleep is also different. It's like a paralysis. I had funky dreams, one of which was that I was drumming for a John Mellencamp video (I am taking the wife to see him in a few weeks for her Christmas present. I figured that if she is ever going to sped a weekend with her sugar daddy I might want to be the chaperon, so there it is). For a while I wanted to wake up, but I literally could not. So I kept drifting back to sleep with this massive weight pulling me down into the bed. I am sure that this might be normal for some folks – weird dreams and big naps – but I am a 20 minute napper and never remember my dreams.

So Herx is also considered a diagnostic of the disease as part of the clinical diagnosis. Since Lyme is a clinical problem first and blood test generally suck as methods to detect it, this is also part of it. Rather rational. If you have this kind of reaction, along with all of the other clinical symptoms I presented, that's a BINGO. Screw the blood tests. I feel like crap today. Which ironically means I am getting better.

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