Save Clarabelle! (a charity for a dog suffering from lyme disease)

tl;dr - my dog has contracted lyme disease and treatment has bankrupted me, so far only one person has helped, this is not a scam proof is below, she is a good dog a young dog and she doesnt deserve to spend the rest of her life with this. Throw some bitcents into the hat and help a good soul thrive.

Save Clarabelle

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Hi, this is clarabelle, she is a 5yr old pit mix, i found her on the blue ridge parkway up in the mountains on the 4th of july.
http://s7.postimg.org/ba9jttczv/image.jpg
(Im holding her back from kissing me)

I searched and searched for her owner but she had no tags and no chip and no one claimed her so she became mine. My friend who had lived in the mountains all his life said that people will dump dogs when they cant afford to keep them, clarabelle was so scared when i found her and has never wanted to leave my side since. She has been fortunate since i am home most of the time, i have debilitating disc problems in my back that keep me from doing any sort of manual labor, even standing or sitting for prolonged periods cause alot of pain so my family has been there to support me for these past few years. As of december 2013 i found a tick on her stomach that had a 6" wide dark brown circle around it, ive never seen anything like it and ive had the pleasure of holding many a tick over an open flame until they pop.

http://s28.postimg.org/jb1r9x6e5/dermnet_rf_photo_of_tick_bite.jpg
(It was like this but 6" wide)

I pulled it off and the circle went away after a few days, and then two weeks later she got a fever. Ive never seen a dog have a fever but i figured that it would go away like it does with humans, but my parents told me dogs just dont get sick unless its something really serious so we took her to the emergency vet. It was so bad she couldnt even get up to drink so they put her on IV and had her stay overnight. She came back to, but was still horribly sick, the vet gave us 3 antibiotics, amoxicillin, flagyl, and doxycycline. We also had her tested for lyme and some other stuff, the lyme came back "somewhat positive", they didnt sound sure of it, then they did another lyme test 2 weeks later, no sign, by then we decided to take her off the antibiotics even though she had a 103-105f temperature the whole time (dogs normal temperatures are 101-102f, and can die at 106f). She had to the hospitalized overnight a few more times during those two weeks, and we even did a series of IV's in a row for a week after her bloodtest showed she had an elevated liver level that was 10x what is should be. It helped some but by then all we could do was put a fan on her and set the AC in the 60's to keep her temperature down, and the worse part was her gums and lips were so raw from whatever was attacking her that she was pink and bleeding and her throat so sore she could barely eat wet food even though she wanted to. I dont have any pictures of her like this, i didnt want to remember her that way.

The vets gave up on her and told us to take her to an internist, who after performing the most awful test involving jamming needles in her abdomen and moving it around, gave up and told us to give her steroids. So we started giving her prednisone and like that the fever went away, the internist said she had an autoimmune condition, but couldnt tell us where it came from other than it was "spontaneous". I didnt give up on her, i began researching autoimmune conditions and it kept coming back to lyme disease. She had all the classic conditions, arthritis namely, and of course the circular rash which is specific to lyme (but does not always show when bitten!), so i stumbled upon this book in my search for a solution, Healing Lyme.

http://s18.postimg.org/yp2c5wb4p/3_1.jpg
(Look at what sprung up behind this book!)

Its a very detailed and thorough book, it describes the lifecycle of the lyme bacteria from its start in the ticks gut to how it knows when to go to the saliva glands and enter the host, then how it can determine what animal its in and change its own dna structure to adapt to that environment and disable the hosts immune system or masquerade as a good cell to avoid detection. All in all you begin to realize how much of an epidemic lyme is, how intelligent it is, and how woefully unprepared humanity (and dogmanity) is for it. Actually dogs have a vaccine for lyme, but humans dont. If you want to get vaccinated you have to convince your vet to give it to you. Worse yet its really hard to detect lyme and the tests available only apply to one specific strain of lyme that has never even been found on a human. And if you get a european strain of lyme you will need to be tested in europe to detect it. Sounds really bad yes? Well it gets better, even if you have been certified as infected with lyme your insurance company wont pay for it because the american medical association which specifies accepted medical treatments doesnt recognize lyme as a legitimate illness. Its understandable though, lyme is really hard to detect and it can cause a whole host of problems including Alzheimers (its penetrates the blood brain barrier and steals ATP from the brain while hiding from the immune system, the source of mental problems with lyme), so its not always evident from the symptoms that lyme is the cause.

So why is it so hard to treat lyme? Theres not a whole lot of research into treating it, it was originally discovered in the 70's in Lyme, Connecticut, when it gave a bunch of kids really bad arthritis, and it has only recently become an epidemic, infecting 200,000 new people each year as its spreads from the NE throughout the country, and has in the last years been found in japan as well as europe. The CDC reporting requirements are unusually narrow and is not required, so only a fraction of confirmed lyme infections get reported, which coupled with the medical communities suppression of evidence and harassment of doctors who have attempted to treat lyme with longterm antibiotic therapy (reported to be the only known way of treating lyme), makes it seem like much less of a problem than it actually is.

http://s24.postimg.org/53rxc0tmt/Dogs_v_Human_Lyme.jpg
(see how low those CDC reporting numbers are?)

http://s30.postimg.org/n0cohvp9t/lyme_disease_map.jpg
(just 30 years ago this was only found in a small town in connecticut)

There are a handful of enterprising researchers who have done studies with lyme and antibiotics, namely Dr. Eva Saapi, Dr. Brornson, Dr. Alan MacDonald, of whose studies and revelations had led to what is really the best shot to date at treating the disease, the combination of Doxycycline and Tinidazole. What they discovered is that lyme isnt just a singular organism, it can change form, from a spiral shape that normally burrows into cartridge and tissues to feed,

http://s29.postimg.org/3obtvnpyf/image.jpg
(Lyme bacteria in its normal spiral shape)

to a heavily armored seed called a round 'cyst'.
http://s22.postimg.org/ieyzg11zl/491_borrelia_burgdorferi_jpg.gif
(The spirochete turning into a cyst)

It works like this, when lyme is under duress, either from an antibiotic or an immune response, it will burrow its way into cells that the immune system and most antibiotics cant get into, such as the endothelial cells that line the blood stream. If it gets attacked by a intra-cellular antibiotic such as doxycycline it will turn into a cyst such as that pictured above and will shed its original spiral form, and can do this in under a minute. The cyst form is nearly invincible and can remain viable for up to 10 months, this has been the source of what makes lyme such a heinous and impossible to cure disease, however the aforementioned researchers have found certain antibiotics, such as tinidazole, to be "cyst-busting" and therefore able to penetrate the walls of the cyst and reach the bacteria inside, eliminating it entirely. The strategy therefore employed is to use doxycycline to force it into cyst form and tinidazole to destroy the cysts.

Going back to the book i found Healing Lyme, it contains alot of sound advice from a millenia of herbal medicine across the world, and for me has had success in managing her autoimmune spawned conditions and causing and treating herximer reactions which are the release of endotoxins from the dieoff of spirochetes, such as lyme and syphilis. Unfortunately its anti-spirochetal herbal remedies dont take into account lymes defensive strategies and was unable to do much more than kill off a portion of the free floating lyme that didnt hide fast enough. The main herb, really its only anti-lyme solution, is called andrographis, i gave this to her for six weeks and attempted to wean her off of her steroids, but she still had her autoimmune condition so i determined it was unable to solve this problem, though the use of teasel to coax the lyme out of the cells did work synergestically with this for a while. The rest of the vitamins and herbs pictured have helped alot, and fall into certain camps:

Auto-Immune
Prednisone - Suppresses immune system
Licorice Root Extract - Stimulates adrenal glands
Stephania - Reduces conjunctivitis
Metacam - Fever reducer
Famotidine - Acid reducer for steroids
Milk - Helps counter loss of calcium from steroids
Eye Ointment - Helps with eye infections
Denamarin - Protects liver from steroids
Anti-Biotic Eye Drops - She gets eye infections from suppressed immune
DHEA - Hormone that doesnt get produced when steroids suppress adrenals

Antibiotic and Support
Tinidazole - Cyst buster
Doxycycline - Encyster
Sarsaparilla - Herx reducer
Japanese Knotweed - Helps drugs reach circulatory dead spots
Dog Probiotic (not pictured) - Counter widespectrum antibiotics
Nattokinase - Helps reduce biofilms that reduce antibiotic effectiveness
Serrapeptase - Helps reduce biofilms that reduce antibiotic effectiveness

Anti-Arthritis
Devils Claw Root
Bromelian
Fish Oil
Glucosamine
Nettle
Curcumin
Red Root

Basic Support (not Lyme related)
HeartGard - Heatworm prevention
NexGard - 100% effective flea + tick treatment
Incurin - Doggy estrogen

So what does this all add up to?

http://s27.postimg.org/4pjxdcqzn/image.jpg
(About $600/month)

And a dog who before would never stopped wagging her tail

http://s3.postimg.org/8mzaslt43/image.jpg

Who could swim for hours

http://s21.postimg.org/6oyvr7n7b/image.jpg

And jump past your head

http://s7.postimg.org/a4biuvswb/image.jpg

To a dog who needs help getting on the couch

http://s10.postimg.org/j6ykm84q1/image.jpg

And now spends her time licking her enflamed joints

http://s15.postimg.org/wu4q5n5uz/image.jpg

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Im into the 3rd week of the antibiotics and am having to choose between food, gas, or medicine. What little i do make i manage working a desk job for the family business but despite years of looking for some opportunity that wont cost me my health i have been unable to find even a lowly job sweeping floors. Im not a janitor by trade, im skilled in film and video (i can change out a 35mm roll with my eyes closed), but the film industry as been sinking for a while and those who are already in it are finding themselves being pushed out, so its been every man for himself and invite only. I have a site with my work but wasn't able to afford to renew the domain, if i can raise enough i will spend the $20 to get it back.

I can see that the antibiotics are helping her and shes able to get up steps now, but if i have to stop her antibiotics short it will leave highly resistant bacteria to recolonize and will make the problem even worse. Help me afford her medicine and give her a life.

My donation address:

1HWdtGBS1Kwsacyd6s8cT3yBzDEHfur4Kp

Save Clarabelle

(this is treated as a gift for tax purposes since i am not a registered charity)

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