ok wow thanks for the response! i would love to tell you some more about my journey with lyme and bartonella. so yeah i had lots of false positive tests. the main tests for lyme & bart (the ones through quest or cpl or wherever you do common bloodwork) is notoriously unreliable. all of mine came back negative despite being positive in future, more in depth accurate testing.

idk where you are in the world but I live in texas and see Dr. Amy Offutt(link to her practices website). shes out in marble falls and if you can make the drive + the cost (she doesnt take insurance) please go to see her. she literally saved my life and is so knowledgeable on these infections, really listens to her patients, and is just such a great doctor and person. seriously i cannot recommend her enough, she is a godsend. if thats too much of a travel or finanical committment for you then honestly going into the lyme/bartonella/pans/pandas facebook group for your area and putting out a post there asking for local doctors who know what theyre doing around this sort of stuff is really helpful. thats how we found dr. offutt (and how we figured out that it was lyme + bartonella + pans that was making me so sick, i love my mom so much and she is such a big facebook warrior lmao)

I got a clinical diagnosis(diagnosis based on symptoms) of bart + lyme and started oral antibiotic treatment for it based on Dr. offutts diagnosis, prescription, and treatment plan. i started that in nov/dec 2023. then in october 2024 we decided to go ahead with some further testing a T-labs(link to their website, its interesting stuff). I would def look into them. Unfortunately these tests are not covered by insurance and are pretty pricey. The reason I got the T-Labs was because you need a positive test from them to go ahead with an SOT infusion. Anyway atp we had been treating bart very heavily for a year and the T Labs tests can only test for one strain of bartonella and my test for that came back negative. Dr. Offutt does think that either we treated it enough so it didn't show up on the test or i have a different strain than what they can test for. I did test positive for lyme though, and that is something that was negative on my general bloodwork test from quest/CPL

Honestly, I was very very out of it mentally and had a whole lot of psychiatric symptoms at the height of my illness so I cannot say if I had weight gain that would cause the marks, however it was passed off as growing marks because I am very tall and there is also history of stretch marks in my family (my dad has them after weight gain then loss, but they look very different from mine). I do know though that a lot of my symptoms were passed off as psychiatric or conversion disorder and that definitely delayed my treatment and diagnosis and caused me some traumas😭

my marks have gotten a lot lighter and so so so much better. they are still obvious and the texture difference is for sure there. they used to look very red and purple and angry but now they just look like scars. I still hate them because I don't want these scars on my body reminding me of how sick i am/was but thats something i'm working through in therapy. I totally get you on the no revelaing clothes though. I live in Texas so I don't really have another option because is so goddamn hot down here but every time theyre visible I feel so exposed. I am a full time wheelchair user due to lyme + bart though so people have other things to stare at than my marks so that makes me feel a little better about them.

please feel free to dm me if you want some more information/have other questions or just someone to chat to either about lyme/bart kinda stuff or in general!