Crisis of Faith

I would be remiss if I didn't mention a recent battle that has run parallel with my Lyme and fluoroquinolone toxicity struggles. I haven't yet mentioned this battle because I didn't think it had anything to do with Lyme or being "floxed" but I now think that there must be some connection. The battle I speak of is with...

Basal Cell Carcinomas.

I started seeing a dermatologist back in August, I still see the same one now and I don't necessarily see myself stopping in the very-near-future. A couple -- or maybe a few -- of these basal cells were present prior to me getting ill in the summer of 2017, but these red spots seemed to get worse after getting Lyme and several others seemed to pop up post-Lyme. Is there a connection? Or just coincidence?

Right now, I'm starting to think there's a connection because the timing seems too synchronous. Perhaps a magnesium deficiency is to blame since magnesium is integral to having healthy skin (read about magnesium deficiencies HERE). Or, perhaps, an excess of heavy metals is to blame, which are known to seep through the skin and cause problems (read about heavy metal toxicity HERE). Or, perhaps, a stressed immune system is to blame; my immune system spent so much energy fighting Lyme and parasites and viruses and heavy metals -- not to mention the fact that it was suppressed by steroids immediately after the Levaquin disaster -- that skin cancer may have seized opportunity and came out to play.

Anyway, biopsying and treating the skin cancers has been less than...um...fun. Part of the problem is that, for many of the basal cells, I have no choice but to remove them via surgery, which leaves scars, because the alternative option is to use a chemo cream but, because I'm now overly sensitive to chemicals, I do not want to use the chemo cream (my LLMD also recommended against doing so). I mean, can you blame me? Levaquin was a chemo drug (read about my disastrous experience taking Levaquin HERE). Do I really want to use another chemo drug? Not that the cream would be as strong as Levaquin (at least, I don't think it would be) but I still feel it would cause me problems, even though it's used topically.

So, right now, I'm starting to look like some angry old man put cigarettes and/or cigars out all over my body. Okay, it's not THAT bad...yet...but it may be getting to that point.

As far as the basals on my face and neck go, I must remove them via a special surgery called "MOHS." This is partially a good thing and partially a bad thing. It's good because I don't have to worry about using the chemo cream or having them removed by regular surgery that leaves a cigarette-burn-looking scar. It's bad because it's REALLY friggin' difficult finding a Mohs surgeon that takes my insurance. 

If I haven't made it obvious yet in these articles, I don't have good health insurance. I had to get on the phone for several hours, calling different places: surgeon offices, my insurance company, my primary care provider etc. Just when I thought I found somebody, I was let down. My insurance company would say this surgeon took my insurance; I would call them and they would say no, they didn't. My PCP would tell me another surgeon took my insurance. Nope, they didn't. I would log onto my insurance company website and get the names of several surgeons who took my insurance. Nope, none of them did. It seemed like a wild goose chase.

Finally, after maybe dozens of phone calls, I determined Mass General Hospital took my insurance and I set up an appointment for a consultation. I would've let out a deep exhale...EXCEPT...there was another problem: my knee. The back of my knee. It was still bothering me (see the end of my last blog) and walking in Boston, to and from Mass General, would be significantly more difficult. I had no idea what was wrong (and still have no idea as of writing this), whether it was torn cartilage or meniscus, tendonitis, arthritis or something else. This was very frustrating because the timing was awful. Just a couple weeks earlier, I was walking greater distances than I had been since I was sick. The walk to Mass General would have been no problemo but now it was a BIG problemo and it added to my stress.

Flash-forward a couple weeks later and my knee started feeling better; in fact, I would say it felt about half better and I thought it would only improve more as time went on. I thought the trek into Mass General would be no big deal and consequently (and, as it turns out, foolishly) I started amping up my walking a bit more. The most amped of these walks took place two days before my consultation in Boston. After this walk, my knee flared up all over again. I thought I was screwed and I was pissed at myself for walking too much. Why didn't I just take it easy? At least until the appointment was over? Now it would be much greater a challenge getting into Boston for the freggen appointment.

Waiting for the Blue Line.

I went online and literally mapped my commuting route into Boston, down to the very last step. Parking at MGH was supposedly a major pain in the butt cheeks so I knew public transportation was my best option. I found that I could take the commuter train into Back Bay Station, then take the Orange Line subway to State Street and transfer to the Blue Line, which took me to the Bowdoin stop that was only a four-minute walk from the building my appointment was at. This meant all the walking involved would be the four-minute walk, in addition to some minimal walking inside train and subway stations. Oh, and it would be round trip. Could I do it?

I wasn't sure.

Ultimately, I had my dad come along for the appointment. This way, he could help me out if the walking was too much for my angry knee. Of course, I felt like a dingbat taking my dad with me for the appointment. I'm sure the secretary at MGH was, like, "Why the F does this 36-year-old man have his dad here with him for his appointment?" I wanted to answer, "Because I'm a Lymey Bastard and I hurt my knee and I sometimes need help doing really simple shit!" But I knew I couldn't just yell this out.

In the end, I made it to and from the appointment ok. My knee bothered me a little bit but it miraculously felt better as the day went on. The weather was on the warm side and I think that, for whatever reason, the knee joint feels better when it's warmer and slightly more humid as opposed to very cold and dry winter air. Does this mean it's arthritis? No idea. I'm not a doctor.

So I guess my worry was ultimately unnecessary but, still, I mean, my God! At a certain point, you start to wonder, how much more of all this can I take before I lose it completely? What are the limits of my sanity? How could things have become so bad? Is this all worth it? Am I better off dead? Seems like a total disaster. Total nightmare. Nothing is easy. Lyme = lack of physical ability = lack of ability to make sufficient money = lack of good health insurance = huge-ass hassle for a person who doesn't feel great to begin with. It seems like just when you think things couldn't get any worse (and maybe, just maybe, things are starting to get/look better), they do get worse and your capacity to withstand misfortune keeps getting tested further and further. The question is, when will this all end? When will things turn around? Will they ever??

If this whole "Lyme experience" is good for nothing else, it certainly makes you think about the misfortunate people out there, how they're always out there and you should never forget them. You can easily become one of these misfortunates yourself and you would want people to think about you and not be forgotten or ignored. That's part of the golden rule, I think. Do and think unto others.

Also, this experience humbles you in ways that you never ever could imagine. When you find yourself mapping out a trip into Boston down to the very last step because you can only take a limited, finite amount of steps...well, that humbles a man who, just a year and a half ago, was zipping through Boston on his feet at about 20 miles per hour (see ONE LAST HURRAH WITH DADDY blog). No matter what my future holds, whether I get much better, fully better, back to normal or what-have-you, one thing I will NEVER do again is take my body and my health for granted. Fuck no, I will not do that. I almost feel like everybody should go through the experience of having to map out a trip to a much-needed doctor's appointment down to the very last freakin' step and experience the fear of maybe, just maybe, not having enough steps in you to make it there. People need to feel the stress and frustration of being so physically limited. People also need to feel the embarrassment of needing to depend on somebody for assistance (in my case, my dad). That's the kind of shit that will put perspective into your eyes.

Lastly, this experience could be one gigantic test of faith. I've been tested before but not quite to this extent. If this is a test of faith, it's an epic one and really, really, really (and also really) difficult. In fact, I don't think it's ever been so difficult for me to hold the faith. I've never been so close to losing it completely and I've never been so close to entering a state of deep and total despair. I'm not quite there yet, but, damn, I've never been so close.

Heavy Metal Problems

The time had come to see my doctor again. My LLMD, that is. Lyme-literate doctor. Not my Primary Care Physician. You get it. Speaking of my PCP, though...

I'd just recently had an appointment with him at the beginning of October and it went well, not that we really did much of anything except check blood pressure and maybe weigh me, but we DID check my liver levels and I was happy to discover that my enzymes were back to normal. This was a good sign, I thought. Because I was worried my liver was screwed up in a major way. In fact, back in January, my PCP had suggested I get an ultrasound to check on the liver. I did not get the ultrasound, not because I didn't think I needed one, but because I didn't want to know if something was wrong (ignorance is bliss). Instead, I decided to just wait several months and then check on the liver enzymes again, which I did and, as I mentioned before, they were fine. Sorry to repeat myself.

Where was I?

Oh yes. The LLMD.

Although my liver enzymes were back to normal, at least according to the recent blood report, this didn't mean I was all back to normal. And I wasn't. I was still having problems, one of the biggest of which was (still) with exercise and physical activity. I must say that my tolerance for physical activity was improving, slowly but surely, on almost a daily basis, but, still...too much activity led to bad things. The dizziness and drunk feeling continued to be an issue (read about this in my WINK blog), but also anger and depression would often come maybe an hour or two after the exercise. Overall, I felt toxic after physical activity; poisoned even. When my liver enzymes were off, I thought that maybe a weak liver was to blame, that I wasn't detoxing properly during exercise. But now that the enzymes were normal, I didn't really know what to think. If my liver was healthy, then what the hell was the problem?

Well, this was the main question I posed when I went and saw my LLMD. I said (and I paraphrase), "What gives, doc? My liver is apparently back to normal, but I still feel poisoned after I do too much exercise and/or physical activity. I still can't walk more than about a half a mile or so at a time--maybe three quarters of a mile--but that's starting to push it."

My doctor seemed surprised to hear this.

Then I said, "Is it possible that I still have an excess of neurotoxins in my body from the Lyme die-off, and they all get squeezed out of my muscles and lymph when I exercise, then they seep into the bloodstream, travel up to my brain, and this explains the poisoned feeling?"

My doctor rubbed his chin in deep thought.

"I'm not so sure about that," he said, "But it IS very possible that heavy metals are to blame."

And he wasn't talking about Slayer, Megadeth or Iron Maiden.

It wasn't the first I'd heard of heavy metals. In doing Lyme research and talking on Lyme Facebook support groups and such, I had heard about heavy metals on countless occasions. I knew that a heavy metal issue was a problem that came along with Lyme. I just didn't know how.

So I had to look it up...

First of all, I wanted to learn what, exactly, heavy metals were. According to what I found on the web, the most common heavy metals are mercury, cadmium, arsenic, lead, copper, silver and aluminum. WE ALL apparently have these metals in our body, usually in very small and manageable amounts, because we're constantly exposed to them in our environment. Common sources of these metals are water (that contains the heavy metal lead and also contains fluoride, which is not a metal, but is a toxin that increases our bodies' uptake of aluminum, which is a metal (source)), vaccines (mercury), dental fillings (mercury), aluminum cookware/cans (aluminum), cigarette smoke (cadmium), antacids (aluminum), antiperspirants (aluminum), fish (mercury), paints (lead), fertilizers (arsenic), car/truck exhaust (aluminum), gasoline (lead) and even sometimes rice (arsenic).

When we're healthy, we're able to ingest these heavy metals and process/excrete them no problemo, or at least with not much of a problemo. However, when we have a disease like Lyme compromising our immune system, a buildup of heavy metals can easily occur. According to an article I found on the web, this buildup is called a "bioaccumulation", which is when you begin to "absorb a substance at a rate faster than your body can metabolize and excrete the substance" (source). A normal body is able to process and excrete the metals quicker than they're entering the body but Lyme hinders the metabolization of these heavy metals and, before you know it, you find yourself head-banging to a fierce heavy metal issue. 

Complicating things further, an excess of heavy metals in your system helps form biofilms that block the immune system from fighting off Lyme. A biofilm is a thick, mucusy shield of bacteria that Lyme spirochetes ultimately create (if they're not killed soon after infecting their host) to protect themselves from the immune system and antibiotics. Heavy metals help to make these biofilms strong and difficult to penetrate. 

In fact, "chronic" Lyme is essentially defined by the presence of these heavy-metal biofilms that make Lyme spirochetes so difficult to kill. You can't kill the Lyme until you destroy the biofilms, but how do you destroy the biofilms? Good question; I thought you'd ask that. According to one article I found, you can do it through natural means, like enzymes (Serrapeptase, Lumbrokinase, Nattokinase) or through conventional drugs (Tindamax) (source).

However, you must be careful about destroying the biofilm (in fact, some experts like renowned Lyme specialist Stephen Buhner argue it's not even a wise thing to do). Because once the biofilm is destroyed, everything that was used to construct the biofilm now gets released into your body, the most intense of which are all the heavy metals. So you suddenly find yourself with a major heavy metals issue after the breaking of a biofilm, not to mention the fact that you must now also deal with the bacteria that created the biofilm to begin with: i.e. Lyme. Yikes! Just when you thought things couldn't get any more complicated, right?

Anyway, after reading all this, I started to think, hmmm, this whole "breaking of the biofilm" phenomenon sounds a lot like how I felt after I took the drug Levaquin where it felt as though a bomb had detonated in my body (read about my Levaquin experience in my blog LEVAQUIN WITH A TWIST OF LYME). Did the Levaquin that I took three weeks prior to being diagnosed with Lyme break open a biofilm within me and this is why it felt like all hell had broken loose in my body after just two pills of the powerful drug? 

Some amateur forums on the web have suggested that this is possible but there doesn't seem to be any professional corroboration that I can find. There are also forums on Facebook where people have suggested that Levaquin can definitely activate dormant Lyme but nobody really knows how, exactly, whether it's via breaking the biofilm or some other way. However, one person in the Facebook group speculated that, since Levaquin and other fluoroquinolones destroy cells in our bodies (because they're literally cell-destroying chemotherapy drugs (source)), wouldn't it make sense that whatever bacteria or viruses or parasites or, yes, heavy metals that lie latent within these cells get released into the body once they are destroyed?

Who knows: maybe Levaquin is to blame for opening up this entire Pandora's box and all I had pre-Levaquin was a nasty, lingering flu virus while the Lyme existed as nothing more than a stealth microbe causing minimal problems. I guess blaming Levaquin for unleashing Lyme and/or heavy metals into my body is just another theory to add to the pile of theories that make my head spin on almost a daily basis. Why did I get sick...how did I get sick...was it the Levaquin...Lyme...something else? Yeesh.

As far as the heavy metals go, at this point, it doesn't really matter HOW I got a heavy metal issue. The point is that I have a heavy metal issue and now the question is how the hell do I get rid of these fiends?

Well, my LLMD "prescribed" activated charcoal for me, which is a binding agent. I discussed binders in a previous blog but it's basically a detoxing agent that binds itself to toxins like heavy metals and pulls them out of your body. Charcoal is a powder. You put it in water, drink, it binds to toxins and then the bound toxins go to the colon where you eventually excrete everything when you pay tribute to the toilet god.

My LLMD also "prescribed" zinc, NAC (N-Acetyl Cysteine) and taurine to assist with the removal of the metals. The zinc helps with the detoxification of metals and the NAC is another chelator that binds to the heavy metals (much like charcoal) and gradually removes them from the body over a slow amount of time. While all that is happening, the taurine fortifies the body's cells and further protects them from "free radical oxidative stress," which is a fancy way of saying "protects cells from destructive heavy metals".

Nothing like a nice, tall 
glass of activated charcoal.

As of the writing of this, the zinc, NAC and taurine seem to be going well but the charcoal is still a work in progress. Sorry for the TMI but charcoal can apparently make you mucho constipated if you take too much of it. Plus, I've noticed that my temperament has become even more unstable since I started dabbling with the charcoal. In fact, I've had a few episodes where I've gotten so agitated that I've gotten into my car and screamed "Fuck!" over and over again, at least five or six times. I know that sounds crazy, and it is, but I think the charcoal has stirred up the metals in my system (mercury, for example, has been known to make people insane in the membrane). I was hoping it would be easier eliminating the metals from my system but that doesn't seem to be the case. Perhaps taking the zinc, NAC and taurine is all I can handle for right now and, over time, they will slowly (and GENTLY) eliminate the metals from my body. Maybe that's the best I can do right now.

We shall see.

Sources

https://www.tiredoflyme.com/biofilm.html

https://trinahammack.com/lyme-disease-heavy-metal-toxicity/

http://whatislyme.com/heavy-metals/

https://drjaydavidson.com/heavy-metals-shield-lyme/

http://lymewarrior.us/heavy-metals-lyme-disease

http://www.ppt-health.com/biofilms-fibrin-and-cysts/heavy-metals-in-biofilms/

https://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/10/15/fda-allows-chemo-drugs-prescribed-antibiotics/

https://www.dailymedicaldiscoveries.com/become-superman-resisting-heavy-metals/