Round 3 of Minocycline and Low Iron Discovery

After 2 attempts at treating my Bartonella with Minocycline and having horrible herxes with it, today, May 26th, I start back very slowly.

My schedule looks like this:

May 26th, Mon, start with a 50mg tab once, then Wednesday, then Friday. That's it for this week.

June 2nd, take a 50mg once daily everyday.

June 9th, take one 50mg tab twice daily.

And that's it this time! The most I will take is 100mg a day. My LLMD feels that this is probably all I can handle for now, and he will watch me closely and if he feels I can get to 200mg down the road then that's what the goal is eventually but not now.

Another new trial I am having is the recent discovery of my dangerously low hemoglobin and iron and shrinking red blood cells. On March 19th I had my blood drawn and when my LLMD received those results everything looked fine...or so we thought!

Then on May 19th I had another blood draw which show my hemoglobin was at a 8.2 and my iron an 18, and shrinking red blood cells.
A normal hemoglobin is 12-15 and iron levels should be anywhere between 50-175.

My LLMD went back to the Mar 19th results to compare the results only to find out the lab had only sent half of the results so he never saw my CBC which would have shown that back in March my hemoglobin was at 9.3. So since March to May I have lost a unit of blood. Not good! He was furious as he could have been treating me all this time.

So now I am on Iron pills and on a journey of tests to make sure I am not bleeding internally somewhere. I have an OBGYN appt for June 19th, then we shall go from there.

I did find out info about low hemoglobin and low iron and shrinking red blood cells. My dear friend whose granddaughter suffers Lyme, they shared with her that Bartonella and other co infections, Babesia, live in your red blood cells and actually feed on your iron levels! UGH! Go figure. She said I needed to be careful to not over do iron stuff as I could actually be feeding the bacteria. My LLMD has suspicions of Babesia, mainly because of my recent test results.

Here's some info from other websites about this.

A New Tick Borne-Parasite That Invades Red Blood Cells-Babseiosis

Article describing how Bartonella burrows in red blood cells

Babesia and Low Hemoglobin

So this is the latest in my Lyme journey and I am hoping for better results in May when I do my next blood draw.

For now I will start the Mino and let's start killing this bug!