Okay, so a long arduous health battle has commenced over the past year, which I've written about a couple of times here and on reddit. It started after years of severe stress/anxiety/depression. Initially I thought it was 'adrenal fatigue', then I was convinced it was hypothyroidism, then other strange symptoms started like POTS, neurological symptoms (off-balance etc.), then I had ECT (which made me worse). After having specialists, my family, doctors etc. all tell me it was in my head, finally a very telling result came back:
I am anemic (Ferritin is okay-ish .. bottom of normal .. but all other lab values, i.e. Iron, Iron Sat etc.) are really low. I am also completely Vit D deficient, and my Monocytes seem to be continually elevated.
Someone suggested I be checked for Lyme & co-infections, given my cluster of symptoms across various systems .. i.e. endocrine, neurological etc. I met with a good doctor here who had me tested locally (Australia), but he also warned me that the lab isn't great and produces a lot of false negatives. I tested negative for everything -- Rickettsia, Bartonella, Lyme etc. This dude isn't allowed to treat Lyme anyway because of Australia's paranoia, so I had to see a doctor who is currently supervising him. That guy ruled out an adrenal tumor and also assured me my symptoms weren't psychosomatic. He, in turn, teleconferences with a German Lyme doctor to further review all cases. They said I don't have Lyme & Co based on the labs, but want to check me for Yersinia and Coxsackie.
I don't think I do have Lyme (since I don't recall being bit by a tick, and haven't been places they might be found) but wonder about the possibility of having the co-infections like Bartonella, Babesia etc.
I also don't know what my chances of recovery at this point are. My 'adrenal fatigue' is bad, and I can't really tolerate anything at all. I know viral CFS is very difficult to treat, and there actually seems to be better outcomes with the bacterial infections.
Since the guy supervising the Lyme doctor said that they can only treat me if they find something, I called a naturopath who was on a Lyme list that was emailed to me by an organization here.
I never had much faith in naturopathic medicine, but she was nice and spoke to me for like an hour (free of charge) and said she uses something called the Byron White formulas. I googled and they sound pretty potent.
Anyway, just curious if anyone here has dealt with anything similar and was possibly able to recover? It would be nice to have my HPA-axis back. I'm not optimistic, though.
I'm just really running out of time, energy and money, so it's hard to know who to even see or what to try at this point, and I am under so much circumstantial/environmental stress that I can't escape. Pretty much every supplement I put in my body (even Vit D) makes me worse. The only thing that has vaguely helped has been a Ketogenic diet.
