Ozone Treatment Started. How We Hope To Improve Our Lives With This Alternative "Experimental" Therapy...

Our latest attempt to combat my wife's Lyme disease started yesterday. After years of suffering and radically limited quality of life, we are now commencing Ozone treatment for her.

It's taken a long time to find a medical practitioner who offers this service in Australia. It's expensive, isn't covered by the public health system or our private health insurance and is a process that is not well explained. We're told that Ozone treatment is considered "experimental" in this country; a characterisation that's understood to be more the result of political motivations than anything medical.

the blood being extracted

The autohemotherapy process involves extracting blood from the patient, mixing it with ozone by shaking a blood filled plastic container that is linked to an ozone cylinder and then reintroducing it into the body. This process was performed three times during the session which takes perhaps an hour and is very painful; although we're told that this is not a normal reaction and could be indicative of the extent of our particular affliction.

the ozone mixing taking place

The "normal" reaction is apparently a tingling sensation and perhaps some followup fatigue but in my wife's case, the pain came in the form of a crushing sensation that extended the entire length of the arm being injected and into the shoulder on that side.

The hope is to increase the body's oxygenation which in turn has a number of proposed benefits for the patient including disruption to bacterial infections and interrupting viral reproductive cycles. In late stage patients as is the case with us, we understand that no cure is available, rather this is a symptom management process which is something we've had to adjust our expectations to match.

So far, there's not much to report aside from ongoing severe pain in the arm and almost complete immobility in the limb. Our hope is that in the longer term, the investment will pay dividends in terms of reduced pain and an increase in quality of life. My empathy goes out to all of those out there who have "out of the box" medical conditions as they're difficult situations to navigate. I'll let you know what this process does for us. Thanks for reading!