I stopped taking massive doses of oral antibiotics, after 9 straight months, in mid-August.  For a while, despite the physical and emotional stress of moving house, and country, everything was going well.  Then, towards the end of September, I picked up a virus – that awful coughing thing that lasts for weeks, which developed into a chest infection.  Having a stash of ’emergency’ antibiotics, for Lyme Disease, I put myself on a 7 day course of Amoxycillin, and that seemed to knock it out nicely.  I began to have the odd Lyme-like symptom but ignored them: as those who have Lyme will recognise, it is all too easy to see Lyme at the root of every ache and pain.  Then it was time to register with a new GP and have a through check-up.  I need to lose weight and my blood pressure (exacerbated by ‘white coat syndrome’) was a bit high but otherwise OK.  Come back in 6 months.  Then I had a few more symptoms, nothing heavy, but more things, followed by the flu-prevention injection in mid-October.  I thought it was time to check this possible resurgence of Lyme and put myself on the full-blown triple antibiotic therapy for 9 days.  It was only 9 days because I stopped with an unfortunate reaction (odd, given I had never had a stomach problem at all in the 9 months of treatment).  At about the same time a number of the symptoms got noticeably worse: muscle twitches and cramps are back (mild but there), my legs seem weak, poor sleep again,joint pain, more noticeable tinitus.  I’m off to the osteopath today because my back is playing up (I think this is unrelated).  So the $64,000 questions are:

1) after 9 months of treatment, did the Lyme come back?

2) or did the virus just knock me back (my immune system still being ‘flat’)?

3) or did the 7 days of Amoxycillin I took for the chest infection have some other effect (like attack some remaining Lyme)

4) or did the flu jab, which is supposed to be an inert vaccine, provoke something?

5) or did the 9 day ‘triple’ antibiotics actually provoke a Herxheimer reaction because there was some residual Lyme Disease?

I confess I don’t have a clue, although I definitely don’t feel as well as I did 2 months ago,  Any ideas?