I hope you can help me, I have been feeling terrible and running a low grade fever ( 99-100 degrees) for over a month now. I have been unusually ill this year starting in November or December- one cold or sinus infection after another- seems like after a week or so on antibiotics i would improve for a few days and then be sick again. Anyway in Feb I was running a temp and my Doctor assumed another sinus infection- I have been on 5 courses of antibiotics since then (tetracycline and zitromax) and am still running temp.feel weak and lightheaded ( like faint). Doctor did blood work- said my white cell count was fine indicating no infection and my thyroid was ok so he does not know whats wrong. I keep feeling worse and worse and its starting to have a disabling effect on me- is hell dragging myself to work- i feel spacey,weak, lightheaded and exhausted even though I get plenty of sleep. Do you have any idea what could be wrong. I have had swollen glands alot also. Maybe chronic fatigue syndrom ? If I could just get some clues I would be very happy and will really appreciate whatever you can tell me.
In Reply to: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Nancy M on July 21, 1998 at 22:30:44:
Dear Nancy,
Sopunds like you need a better doc. Your present doc will probably be glad to see you go anyhow. If I knew what part of the country you were from, I might be able to recommend someone I know personally.
In the meantime, your most likely diagnosis is parasitosis (which the antibiotics are helping stay around). I wonder what your eosinoplile count was AND what your sed rate is.
One thing you can do is start keeping a record of temperatures taken basal ( on awakening BEFORE getting out of bed), mid morning at least an hour away from eating or drinking anything, same with midafternoon and at bedtime (same rules).
Walt
In Reply to: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Nancy M on July 21, 1998 at 22:30:44:
Dear Dr. Stoll,
Thanks so much for your very rapid response. Let me give you just alittle more information. I am female, age 42.
I live in the Nw suburbs of Chicago. I would be happy if you could recommend anyone. There is a dr nearby called Camilla Superson who deals in natural and alternative medicines that I might look into. I also bought a book on chronic fatigue syndrom and do have alot of symptoms but not all. I even researched toxoplasmosis since i have a cat and heard that can cause fever and headaches. I have an appt with my doc on saturday and will ask him it he knows about that eosinophile count but I never had any tests for sed rate. He did send me for chest xray though and I shoud hear about that saturday. I have been keeping a journal of my temp just at random on and off though the day and i cant seem to find any pattern- somedays temp is mostly 99 other days 99.6- 100. I will be reading more on your pages, spent a couple hours here last night but will read more.
again, thanks so much for your response.
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Nancy M on July 22, 1998 at 19:30:56:
Dear Nancy,
Don't DO "random" temps and DO continue keeping them till a competent doc resolves this.
I do not know the doc you listed, personally. However, most any doc who knows enough to combine conventional with alternative approaches is likely to help you a lot more than what you have had so far.
There is a GOOD local organization of these kind of docs. Call (800) 286-6013 [(312) 266-3685 local] and ask for a listing fo their members that are good diagnosticians. Take copies of all of your records with you when you go to save time & money.
Let us know what happens.
Walt
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Walt Stoll on July 23, 1998 at 14:50:21:
Thanks so much for the phone numbers, I will definetly call.
Did do as you suggested today with the temp. When I woke up at 6:10 am i took my temp before i got out of bed and it was 98 even. then at mid morning was 99 even and at midafternoon was 99.4 and at 9pm was 99 even again.
Today was the worst day I have had so far- I was sent home from the office because I almost passed out and I had brain fog so bad I couldnt really get anything accomplished. I felt weak, shakky ( although hands were steady , just felt shaky inside) and overwhelmingly tired. For a brief period it seemed like i had a tightness in my chest that caused me to breath shallow and when i tried some yoga breathing- with deep ,slow breaths it only seemed to make me more lightheaded. I went home and took a nap but didnt feel too much different when i woke up although not as spacey. I have an appt with the doc on saturday because 2 weeks ago when he couldnt figure out what was wrong he gave me zoloft saying maybe I had a chemical imbalance and this would speed up my metabolism- but i looked this up on the web and its like prozac- mainly for depression I gather and I am not depressed at all- or at least I wasnt- and I am not stressed out about anything either. I did take the stuff though and it doesnt seem to help at all, still have the fever and everything. Someone suggested I be tested for Hepatitis. If you have any suggestions about test he should run please let me know. thanks so much for your help thus far and I am going to purchase copy of your book.
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Nancy M on July 23, 1998 at 22:06:21:
Dear Nancy,
Eosinophiles?
With your "negative" workup, parasites are the most likely cause. OF COURSE you have a chemical imbalance. The real question is WHY. Conventional medical schools do not teach whys--they teach making a "diagnosis" & assigning a treatment for the symptoms.
You will not find a competent local laboratory that has any idea how to check for parasites. Even the CDC in Atlanta says that local laboratories only find 1 in 50 of test parasites placed in a specimen.
Walt
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Walt Stoll on July 24, 1998 at 12:00:16:
"Even the CDC in Atlanta says that local laboratories only find 1 in 50 of test parasites placed in a specimen."
Certainly true. Where did they say that?
Dr. B.
In Reply to: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Nancy M on July 21, 1998 at 22:30:44:
I ran a temperature and felt icky for several months. A low grade temperature, never exceeding 100 degrees, was constant Two physicians said it was a virus.
One day, at the dentist, I mentioned that a tooth felt 'funny' when he poked around. It didn't hurt, didn't react to cold or heat either. He immediately sent me for an x-ray of the jaw and they found two abscesses in the jaw bones - one on each side of the jaw. Never felt them at all; no pain, no sensation, but they were creating the fevers and icky feeling.
After the surgery (no pain by the way) I felt great and the temperatures were normal again.
Good luck. Hope they can find the root of your problem.
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Dr. B. on July 24, 1998 at 13:37:49:
Dear Dr B.
I called them directly, once I began to catch on to the vast superiority of certain labs in Arizona at the time.
I spoke to a woman (about 15 years ago--I have not called them since). If you contacted any holistic physicians in AZ, they would know of some of these labs. One of them published several papers about then showing the test scores of labs getting their licenses from the state in parasitology. The way it is done is that the state places parasites in a test specimen & the lab is scored on what % of them they find.
The lab I was using at the time was the only one that had ever found 100% of the planted parasites. The average success at that time was 2% for local labs. This guy (who had come here from Niger) was eventually run out of the country (I am sure for setting such a high standard that all the other pathologists were embarassed.).
Right now the best lab in the country, that I know of, is Great Smokies Labs and even they admit that they only find about 1 in 5 of the parasites present in a single specimen. This is why they recommend several serial specimens for the best diagnostic %. If the parasite is found, the diagnosis is sure since they cannot make up the parasite. If it is not found, it might still be there and was just missed.
When I spoke to the CDC, the best lab that they knew of at that time was the Naval Hospital In Bathesda, MD. They were about as accurate as Great Smokies at 1/5th of the parasites found. I called Bathesda but they wouldn't accept any specimens except from naval personnel.
I am sorry that I can't give you more. When I retired, I discarded about 25 file drawers fo stuff like that ( I still have about 10) (sigh).
Walt
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Barb on July 24, 1998 at 17:37:56:
Thanks, Barb.
When one has what Nancy reported, not finding the cause is the fault of the incompetence of the conventional medical paradigm. There are many possible causes & it is the JOB of the doc to find it.
This is called, in Medical Schools, FUO (fever of unknown origin) and is one of the challenging conditions to resolve. However, all it usually takes is a dedicated physician who is willing to put in some creative thinking----a condition that is becoming rarer as time goes on.
Can you imagine an HMO giving the go ahead for any physician to take the time & testing needed to find something like this? ANY case like this needs a Dentist in consultation. I assumed that Nancy had had that part of the workup. I guess I still have too much faith in the competence of the average MD (sigh).
Thanks for your example. Hopefully it will encourage others to look further.
Walt
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Walt Stoll on July 25, 1998 at 09:21:12:
ahhhh, Saw my doc today and I am so frustrated I could almost spit nails!!! First thing when I went in we discussed the fact that I still have low grade temp and that this fast week I have felt worse with Thursday being the worst day yet. He said I should keep taking the Zoloft because I obviously had a chemical imbalance because all my bloodwork was normal- therefore I was stressed or depressed. I told him being 42 yrs old, a career woman, married with 3 children, I know what stress and depression are and I dont have EITHER of those. In fact this past year has been great for me personally and professionally until this health thing came up in February. He said I didnt know what I was talking about-I was stressed on the inside and had to keep taking the Zoloft. I told him I quit taking it Thursday when I had such a bad day and I felt just alittle better Friday and I did not take it Friday either and felt alittle better this morning. I am not going to take that stuff anymore. He became very angry about this. When I asked him about Parasitosis he said I did not have that. I told him I thought bloodwork would not show this and he said that if i had any virus, parasite,or fungus the bloodwork would have showed it. Even yeast overgrowth. I think he is wrong about that from what I have read. Anyway- he never did a sed rate so he sent me today for an hiv test and sed rate. My chest xray came out fine. I have had regular dental care by the way and if I did have any kind of dental infections I think the 4 courses of antibiotics I have had in the past 8 weeks should have taken care of that, but I will have my dentist check again anyway. The doc was right about my bloodwork though, he actually gave me a copy and everything is normal. I think maybe its just a bad b-12 deficiency. I have stared taking multivitamins 2 times day.
Heres the info on my tests:
wbc 8.0 rbc 4.60 hgb 14.7
hct 44.0 mcv 95.6 mch 32.1
mchc 33.5 rdw 12.5 mpv 7.7
platelets 272 % gran 65.5 % lymphocytes 24.7
% monocyte 6.6 % eosinophil 2.0 % basophil 1.2 (high)
t3 1.25 t4 1.02 tsh 1.97
cholesterol 211. (high)
triglyceride 405. (high)
hdl 30. (low)
non linear ldl- trig > 400 unable to calc ldl
glucose 98. bun 8. creatine 1.0 bun/creat 8
sodium 141. potassium 4.6 cloride 106.
calcuim 9.1 protien,total 6.8 albumin 3.8
a/g ratio 1.3 ast(SGOT) 19. alk phos 89.
bilirubin .7
Dont know where to go from here but I am not going back to him. At the end of the year I am getting off this dumb HMO and going back on to regular insurance.
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Walt Stoll on July 25, 1998 at 08:41:57:
Dr. Stoll,
You probably remember Dowell Labs in Ariz. I used them and added Meridian Valley, GSDL (Great Smokies) and a little lab in NJ run by a young fella' by the name of Lee before he became popular through the lectures of Leo Galland.
I did some time in Africa "working with" parasites and became quite aware of the limited training and experience of US pathologists in this area. They don't realize what they don't know.
I knew that the best way was to sit down at the 'scope with a warm sample (assuming you even knew what you were looking for) and that just doesn't happen here.
I had heard rumors and estimates but I've never seen the truth in print anywhere. I've had the CDC admit some amazing things on the phone, too, but "good luck" getting it in print.
My procedure was to do multiple samples to 2 or 3 labs simultaneously when it was critical. I used multiple random, purged and swab samples. Even after GSDL started saying that swab wasn't necessary, I still found them to turn up some surprises. Expensive, yes, but the people I chose to work with usually had already experienced "budget" healthcare and were committed to getting to the truth. They were more concerned about relief than whether the insurance would pay the bill. I couldn't tell you how many arthritic patients alone improved significantly after we identified and treated E. nana. For them, it was worth the expense.
I found some labs were better at finding certain organisms and if I suspected, say Blastocystis hominis, I would be sure one of the samples went to GSDL. If I suspected Endolimax nana, I would include Dowell in my list, and so on.
Over time I began to feel that the labs had occasional "bad hair" days, so I took that into account as well.
Since '85, we have had some pretty sophisticated tools for this work. It's just too bad it doesn't get the press it deserves. I believe parasites are far more problem than generally thought.
Even when the labs are negative, there is still room for "the art of medicine" to be exercised with the intuition of an experienced healer.
Regards,
Dr. B.
http://HealthChoice.net
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Nancy M on July 25, 1998 at 14:45:10:
Dear Nancy,
How could your doc know ANYTHING about parasites when his lab only finds 2% of whatever is in the specimen?
Your basophile level is high and your eosinophile level is at the top of normal. This pattern IS that of parasitosis.
You are right in that you need a more knowledgable (and open minded) doc. I would suggest calling (800) 522-4762 and asking them for a list of physicians in your part of the country who would know enough to order a comprehensive stool analysis and several purged stool analyses AND what to do about the results. When you see that physician, be sure you have in hand all of your medical records. That will save you lots of time & money.
You would also be wise to take a look at the Healtrh Coaching link on this 'site & collect a history like that for him/her as well.
Let us know what you learn & what happens.
Walt
In Reply to: Re: Parasites (was: desperate- low grade fever) posted by Dr. B. on July 25, 1998 at 17:25:37:
Dear Dr B.,
I am beginning to suspect that we are "kindred spirits". I, too, started my parasite oddssey with Dowell Labs. I switched to IBILE (Dr Ibraheem) in Phoenix when I saw his test scores with the state examining facility for parasitology. He is the one that they ran out of the country so as not to be embarassed with that they did not know.
I have not kept Dr. Dowell's number and address since I had not used her for so many years. Do you have it? Since Dr Ibraheem left, she would be near the top of my list for certain parasites as well--right along with Great Smokies.
I am certain that we will both be proven right in our knowledge that parasitosis is VASTLY underdiagnosed in this country and that they explain MANY of the currently unexplained (by the intentionally ignorant specialists in gastroenterology) chronic conditions in many patients.
In the end, though, people will have to do something about their LGS (which opened them up to the parasite(s)), or the problem will come right back.
How about the CDC's, OWN statistics that (even with only finding 20% of the parasites in any test sample--the best presently available in this country) more than 50% of grocery store workers have active parasites? Can anyone, with LGS, hope to stay free of them?
A healthy gut is highly inimical to parasites but once they get established, they can be hard to dislodge.
I REALLY appreciated this post!
Namaste! Walt
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Walt Stoll on July 26, 1998 at 09:54:03:
Dear Dr. Stoll,
Thank you so much for all your time and the information. Never had a stool sample (sounds yucky) but I guess its at a point where that needs to be my next step. I will call the numbers you gave me and find a new Dr. I Do feel much better since Thursday , I dont know if its all the rest combined with the Vitmins I have started taking and stopping the medication (zoloft) but I know its not gone so I will pursue it. I do feel the need to get your book and I will. Any other suggested reading would be appreciated.
Again, thank you for your help and I will keep you informed.
Nancy
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Walt Stoll on July 24, 1998 at 12:00:16:
well- I guess I will start taking that Zoloft again cuz now I think I am depressed. I went to Dentist yesterday- Have 2 impacted wisdom teeth on the bottom that I never had removed and thought that might be cause- he gave me complete checkup with panoramic xray- teeth still there but he sees no sign of abcess or infection. I am going to have them removed anyway just in case but It does not look like thats the problem. Doc got back my final blood test results today- hiv test was fine and he said my sed rate was very low- so no indication whatever of any infection or virus. He still goes with chemical imbalance and I need to take the Zoloft- he said chem imbalance like this in woman can cause low grade temp. I am at wits end and dont know what else to do. Temp is only 98 in morning before I get out of bed but was 99.4 by mid morning. Its the tiredness that is
getting to me most.
In Reply to: Re: desperate- low grade fever-doc cant find cause! posted by Nancy M on July 29, 1998 at 19:58:30:
Dear Nancy,
Chemical imbalance, yes, but WHY? I am sure that is not a Zoloft deficiency (grin).
I would like to see the research that says that your chemical imbalance, alone, can cause the temperature elevations you are reporting. The chances are that your actual causes of the imbalance are causing the temps and that the "experts" are associating them without realizing that they are NOT cause & effect.
Walt
What can you tell me about ringworm? I have a spot on my bicep that my doctor believes is ringworm and she's started me on Lamisil cream for it. Is there a non-prescription way that you could recommend that I get rid of it? Is this something I could've gotten just because I came in contact with something/someone with the fungus on it, or is there some sort of immune issue I should be dealing with to prevent reoccurrences in the future? (This is the first time I've had this.) Thanks for any advice you can give me.
In Reply to: Ringworm posted by Sue on July 24, 1998 at 21:32:15:
Dear Sue,
This IS an immune issue but, unless you have recurrence, you have lots of time to look into that. Anyone can get a first case just from an abrasion if the wrong organism happens to be right there.
Prescription creams are the best thing I know for this. The main thing (which few people will tell you) is that NOTHING kills fungus. All it does is keep it from growing while your normal skin grows the infestation off your body. Therefore, no matter what you use, you have to use it at least 4 weeks (which is the amount of time it takes for your skin to totaly regrow itself). During that time, if you miss just one treatment (at least twice a day) the skin that grew that day might just become infected & you have to start your 4 weeks all over again.
Walt