Refuse to sink - My journey battling Lyme disease

2019 sparked the beginning of a beautiful journey. A journey deep within myself, to places I had long forgotten existed. I saw, for the first time, how much of my life was lived for others. For their approval, their validation, their amusement. My decades-long tendency toward people-pleasing had left me imprisoned in a cell of my own making. This year, I began to tear those walls down. For the first time, I asked myself - Who am I? What do I want? What do I believe? What do I want out of life? I stripped away the things that did not fit me and opened myself up to the things that did. Every belief I held was examined, every desire, every dream...I left no stone unturned. It has been a journey of transformation, and, like the process of transformation always is, it was fraught with pain, frustration, and difficulty. Working on your inner shit isn't for the faint of heart. We spend so long running from our pain, it rarely occurs to us to turn around and embrace it. But in order to m...

I realized today that it's been over two months since I last updated. I created this blog as a way to keep track of my healing journey, so I don't write with the expectation that it will be read by many. But I still try to update regularly and be transparent about what I'm going through. The last month-and-a-half has been incredibly stressful.  At the very end of October, I had my first appointment with my new primary care doctor. Ever since what I went through with trying to get diagnosed with Lyme, I have struggled with trust issues with doctors. It took a few months to make the appointment because of that fear and anxiety, but I started having symptoms I felt were indicative of a thyroid issue or hormonal imbalance. I went to a doctor I had heard good things about, who is an MD but also very naturally-minded. I handled the visit well, and absolutely loved my new doctor, she was very knowledgable about Lyme and eager to hear my entire story from the time I started ge...

"Healing is not linear" has been my mantra. It's a reminder that whatever health struggles I'm having, doesn't necessarily mean I'm going backwards. Treating Lyme disease is most definitely an exercise in patience. It's been almost 2 1/2 years, and remission still eludes me. It's hard to not become frustrated and discouraged, but I'm doing my best to remain optimistic and focus on how far I've come. Theoretically, the further along in treatment you are, the less you experience herxheimer reactions. For some reason, that hasn't proven true in my case. I spent the second half of October and a good part of September herxing nearly non-stop, the same symptoms I've been dealing with since January - shoulder, neck and jaw pain, but mostly centered in the shoulders. It became so bad that it started affecting me emotionally, so I finally decided to go down to the lowest dose of herbs 3 times a day, and then slowly work my way back up. I a...

The summer has been flying by, and I've been out living my life. I'm not to remission yet, but I'm very close. I'm still dealing with some intermittent symptoms: air hunger, hip and knee pain, shoulder and jaw tightness. I also occasionally experience rib soreness and some slight joint pain in my fingers. I have days and weeks where I do not have any symptoms at all. The air hunger is slowly phasing out I've noticed. I'll have it for 4 or 5 days, then a week or two without it, which is wonderful because I really hate that symptom. Gasping for breath constantly isn't fun. Right now, I'm feeling stuck. I started my new herbs last week and have again been dealing with the shoulder pain & tightness that extends up into my jaw. I've been seeing the chiropractor and felt that we were solving this issue, but now that it's returned I'm started to wonder why I'm stuck at this point. I first experienced these symptoms in January, when my...

Two years ago on this day, I began treatment for Lyme disease, Bartonella & Babesia. They've been two of the hardest years of my life. I cried so many tears, I had days of debilitating depression and anxiety, I experienced loss of emotions (I felt very flat, emotionally speaking) and the pain...so much pain. Taking 30+ pills a day and spending hundreds every month in the hopes of getting rid of the more than 40 symptoms I was dealing with. I lost friends, I stayed home like a recluse, I wondered a million times if I was going crazy. And yet when I look back, I see a time of tremendous personal growth. I look at who I am now and know without a doubt I wouldn't be here if it weren't for getting sick. They say pain is a gift, and I tend to agree. No one escapes pain, it's part of life. But it's in our pain and dark times that we discover our inner strength, and who really are. These things aren't learned by life being easy. Seeing how far I've come s...

During my last consult, after talking about the constant pain and tightness in my shoulders, neck and jaw, my herbalist suggested I see a chiropractor to make sure nothing "mechanical" is going on. It worked out that Justin had just started seeing one so I made an appointment with him and saw him last week for the first time. He confirmed that everything from my mid-upper back and up was very tight. He said all of the muscles in my shoulders, neck, and chest are working together very hard just to hold my head up. This makes a lot of sense, because I have so much muscle weakness in my shoulders. He adjusted me and gave me some ideas on how to stretch certain muscles and how to fix my posture. I'm honestly feeling relieved and encouraged after seeing him. With Lyme, you get so used to doctors not finding anything wrong (even though you know things aren't right) that it is actually nice to how concrete proof of what's causing your pain. I'm wondering if all thi...

This last month was a rough one. I herxed almost continually every single day; the same pain in my shoulders, neck & jaw, and my air hunger returned. I had my monthly consult a couple days ago, and she thinks it's time to back off and only add in houttuynia every other month, like we do with the sida acuda. She said the constant herxing isn't necessarily a bad sign, but it is a stress to the body. We also believe stopping the intermittent fasting contributed to the herxing. The last few days I unintentionally did 12 hour overnight fasts and noticed a huge decrease in my herxing symptoms, so I believe my body really needs those extra hours to detox. We agreed that I'm going to do 12 hour fasts 3 non-consecutive days a week, because we know my body really needs the fasting but we also need to keep my hormones at healthy levels. It's always a challenge keeping the right balance for my body. I felt so discouraged all month, and it was really taking a toll on my positi...

I had a great follow-up consult with my herbalist Friday. She continues to be happy with my progress and thinks by July I'll be ready to wean off of my antimicrobial herbs, although I'll continue taking core support herbs. I have to have 3 months symptom free to be considered in remission. I was really excited about the prospect of remission being so close, and I posted something on FB about it. What no one saw behind that post, is that I've been dealing with a lot of pain, flares and herxing lately. Even though I'm supposedly near remission, I certainly haven't been feeling like it this last week. I mentioned in my last post about how going off of intermittent fasting threw my body into a hormonal crisis of some sort. It's also affected my Lyme symptoms, and I'm not sure exactly what is what, I'm just trying to give my body time to adjust. I woke up almost a full week ago with terrible neck pain, and it has continued daily ever since. I didn't h...

In my last post I talked about how I believed intermittent fasting was behind my hormonal imbalances. About a week after I stopped IF, I was riding the hormonal crazy train - depression, irritability, crying for no reason. I felt like I did postpartum after having my babies, it was absolutely insane! But it proved to me that IF was messing with my hormones. It also threw me into a Lyme flare, I was getting a lot of pain in my hips, legs, and even my hands. And now, two weeks after quitting IF, I feel like my body has adjusted for the most part. I'm not having the crazy mood swings and feeling back to normal. I'm sure it'll take at least a month for my body to fully adjust, but right now I'm just glad I'm feeling myself again.  Last week was a great week for concerts! I went to see Disturbed and Three Days Grace on Wednesday, and then Saturday saw Papa Roach and Shinedown. I went alone to the Shinedown concert, which is totally out of my comfort zone. I've bee...

The biggest super moon of the year just passed by. I was extremely surprised at how well I fared; typically in the week leading up to a full moon, I feel off and have an increase in symptoms, especially air hunger. This time, I had one night of insomnia plus felt a bit off the following day. This is really exciting to me because it shows tangible proof of how much I've improved.  I recently watched a documentary on Netflix called "Heal." I highly recommend it to everyone, especially those dealing with illness. It was about the mind-body connection and how our bodies desire to heal themselves, but our minds often get in the way. One of the women they interviewed spoke of 9 common healing factors they found people with cancer had in common. Here they are: It was absolutely crazy to me as these are all things I have naturally adopted in my Lyme journey. When I started doing these, I really began to see things turn around. It was really quite incredible to hear tha...

As of this month, I've been treating for 20 months. Almost two years already! I remember about 3 months into treatment, I had a couple good weeks. I thought to myself, wow! Looks like I'm already healing! I laugh at that now, because that was just the beginning. Healing isn't quick, and it isn't predictable. The only predictable part, is the unpredictability. No two healing journeys are the same. Almost two years, and I've not yet made it to remission. I'm honestly not bothered by that, because I know I'll get there. The year of antibiotics put me in a place where I was much more functional. I don't care if the herbs take a while, because I am already in such a better place. Here is my master list of symptoms. I know there are likely some that never made it on here, but this is most of them. Symptoms in bold I still currently have, but none of them are 100% constant. Symptoms in italics are intermittent. I don't have them more often than I have...

I've been dealing with some disappointment the last few days. I've had worsening muscle weakness, mostly concentrated in my shoulders. Emily believes the new herb she added into my treatment has reached spots where the lyme was hiding - primarily my neck, shoulders and jaw. These are all areas I haven't previously had many issues with. Since starting the new herb in the beginning of January, I get extreme tightness in my shoulder and neck muscles, and aching pain in my jaw. Sometimes (like today) my jaw gets tired just chewing my food. My shoulder muscles burn just by lifting my arms even a little bit; sometimes they burn even if I'm not using my arms at all. Pain meds don't help, so I'm trying to use the hot tub as much as I can. Emily asked me to take a few days off from doing yoga to give my muscles a break. I felt off without my daily yoga so after two days, I decided to add it back in but I'm careful to keep it very low-impact. I also went to Pound Mo...

Good news to report - my air hunger improved by about 90% this month! This is a big deal. If you've never experienced air hunger, basically it constantly feels like you can't get a deep enough breath. I was constantly gasping for breath, and some days it was so bad I was literally aware of it every.single.time I breathed. Do you know how many breaths you take in a day? A LOT. Imagine noticing each one because you don't ever feel like you have enough air. Yeah, it's not fun. That is one of my major symptoms left. It did flare a bit during this full moon (babesia is a parasitic infection, and parasites are more active during full moons) but only a couple days instead of an entire week. So that is good news. The pain in my hip flexors and the muscle weakness both came back in December and still remain. For the most part, that's all I have left for symptoms, so I am not complaining. I'm still trying to figure out what's going on with my thyroid and hormones. I...

I always feel so inspired when I hear stories of people overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds. Amputees running marathons, people born without limbs learning to skateboard and live a normal life, people struck by a life-ending diagnosis that spend the rest of their time on earth helping others instead of wallowing in self-pity. Those people, no doubt, have had the victim mentality at one time or another. They just made the choice to not live that way.  Those with chronic illnesses will go through the 7 stages of grief in the aftermath of their diagnosis. The 7 stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, & acceptance. Unfortunately, many people get stuck and cycle through the same stages over and over again, sometimes never reaching acceptance. Each stage is important to overcoming the diagnosis, but remaining stagnant in one stage can inhibit your emotional & physical healing, and lead you to believe you are a victim. When someone is overcome with the v...

2019 didn't start off the way I hoped, but I'm continuing my positive mindset. After flaring out of nowhere in December, then the full moon hitting...I started this month's tinctures last Monday night. Tuesday afternoon, I began with strange symptoms I've never had before - tension/muscle pain in my shoulders, neck, and jaw. It feels like my muscles are in knots. It's been happening every day for a week now, despite detoxing and even lowering my dose of antimicrobials slightly. She adds in the sida acuda every other month so it's typical to herx on the month it's in there, but she also added a new herb which is what I think is causing these strange herxes. Otherwise, for symptoms, I've been having headaches on and off, some insomnia has come back, muscle weakness, and I've been waking up with the rib soreness again. All in all, I'm still doing alright, but really hoping to reverse a lot of this. I woke up today after a mostly sleepless night ...