Hi Chrysalis,

Your sense of humor in the face of pain is really admirable. Thanks for making me smile, my daughter was sick again tonight and it is nice to have something to take my mind off of worry about her.

I don’t have RA and if anything my symptoms line up with scleroderma or lupus… but I have been a close follower of this board since July and I can tell you from what I have read that it sounds like you are herxing. I think I have read more than once that you can expect a flare like clockwork after the second week of minocycline, at least typically, and that scleroderma folks don’t usually herx as much but RA folks do fairly dependably.

Maybe the herx has the symptoms getting worse, but the mino is actually beginning to improve your inflammation levels. Given an infectious cause this makes sense because the bugs are angry about getting killed so they’re getting noisy, but the anti-inflammatory action of mino is probably calming things down overall?

Anyway that is just my thought. I am a huge believer in diet as medicine but maybe in this case the diet alone was not enough to bring down your inflammation and it takes combining it with the abx to get the desired effect. Anyway, my guess is that you will need to hang in there for a while to see if this turns out to be a classic herx.

I am sending you lots of healing thoughts and wishes for a really Merry Christmas. I’m sure someone much wiser than me will have helpful information for you on this board soon 🙂 I look forward to reading their advice and learning.

Take care,
A

@chrysalis wrote:

This week my results show my RA count as 48 but my hands and feet are way worse and have been on mino for 3 weeks. Am really confused about the lower RA count and worse symptoms.

Andrea is right on – sounds like you’re right on target for herxing. 😉

https://www.roadback.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/education.display/display_id/91.html

https://www.roadback.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=studies.display&display_id=184#Anchor-The-51540

“A general aggravation of symptoms is sometimes seen following onset of therapy and is more likely to occur if the disease is severe. This flare may be subjective (invisible) or objective (visible), or both, and may occur several hours or even up to two to four weeks after the medication is started.”

It’s not uncommon for labs to worsen during herxing, too, so if your next labs look a little worse again, then don’t be too concerned. These can be elevated for a few months in some instances during/after herxing and sometimes labs may take a while to follow physical improvements:

https://www.roadback.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=studies.display&display_id=184#Anchor-Laboratory-45656

Everyone is unique in how they respond to AP, so the most important trend to watch is the longterm one, because it can be a bit of a three step fwd and two step back dance for a while with good and bad days. Flares can also still occur, but these should diminish over time in duration, frequency and intensity until they stop occuring altogether.