Exhausted

Wow!  Has it been a month?  I've been up to a lot, but still have times that I struggle.  This month especially felt a lot like "two-steps-forward....one-step-back".  Things were busy and a bit stressful, and I'm sure that's why my body is paying.  Lyme LOVES stress and definitely shows its glee when I get a bit stressed.

Currently I've got ankle joint pain and I pulled something in my wrist (I don't think it's Lyme related), back, and neck.  I've got fatigue, but not as bad as it was when it was bad.  And my head is pounding. I'm on antibiotics this week so I know that has something to do with my symptoms.  But the good news is, my herx reactions are not as strong....they don't lay me out for days....they don't run one into the other without a break.

And I have to say that even just on THIS protocol, I've noticed improvements.  I started another  Babesia protocol (remember that yucky "paint medicine" a while back?  That was for Babesia...) tagged on to the meds I was already on and I got hit hard. It was a test to see if any bit of Babs was left.  Each time I started the newly introduced Babesia-fighter, one of the symptoms was "hot-flashes".  It was significant because my body temperature is almost always low and if anything, I get cold before I get hot (although this peculiarity has evened out after years of treatment for Lyme!).  But now, on my 3rd cycle of Babs. I am hot-flash free.

I also found out the reason for my EXTREME itchiness that would come and go.  I mean, SO itchy that I was drawing blood in my SLEEP.  My husband would tell me in the morning that I was asleep and yet scratching my legs SO hard.  This has come and go starting last year.  It usually lasts a month or so and comes every few months.  I tried OTC allergy medicine, hydrocortisone cream, mattress encasements (in case it was dust mites), every."itch-relieving".lotion.there.is.to.buy.  NOTHING helped.

Then one day after a recent blood work-up, my doctor's office calls and says my cortisol levels were too low and that I needed to start a med to fix that.  I started the new medicine and literally THAT night, the itchiness was gone....and hasn't shown up again.

While I feel so so much better and am able to do so much more and can actually go through a day or two or week without even recalling I have Lyme disease, there definitely are still small signs that the remnants of the bacteria are hanging on.  And that's why I love my doctor.  Going complete and all the way in treatment will make me WHOLLY better.

I emailed my doctor right before the previous cycle of this protocol to say that I just felt like I couldn't do it and is there any way we can change up the meds or something?  The answer was a kind "no".  And basically that I COULD get through it.  It was the first time through these years of treatment that I actually asked if I could change stuff up.  I've wanted to a hundred times, but I knew that if I trudged onward, I WOULD get better.  I think in this case, my glimpse of feeling nearly 100% for some months, only to be knocked down a bit when I started the Babesia treatment made me greedy; greedy for good health.  And it made me less willing to accept that I still have some fight left.

So, not surprisingly, after that email, when I started the next week of meds, it wasn't as rough.  And so it's continued.  Stick with it, and it gets better.  Each round gets better and better.

Taking the girls to the park

How have I been spending my days this month (that makes me so busy I can't blog?) - keeping the tv off and staying off of the computer whenever my kids are in the room, reading and loving on my littlest girl, playing with, interacting with, and teaching my older girl to read, and loving and nurturing our little foster son.  It's fun to finally get to be a "mom". I know I was when I was sick, but I was not the mom I wanted to be.  I just kept praying for the days when I could be involved in my kids lives in a different way without feeling physically awful or constantly irritable due to all the pain and malaise I was feeling.  And those days have come!!  I am just loving it.

Yes...as a mom, I had to give slip-n-slide a chance....or two....or three :)

So again -- hope -- I'm still struggling at times, but we are so seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and it just keeps getting brighter....








My favorite detoxes:
-Burbur drops (in water)
-Green tea (iced in the summer)

Those are really the only things I've found that make me physically feel better and the only things that when taken out of my routine during med weeks, make me noticeably more icky.  I do the epsom salt baths and it's always been hard for me to notice a difference.....except that they make me feel WORSE before they  make me feel better.  The detoxes above actually don't make me feel worse at all.

What are your favorite detoxes?  I'm always looking for some new ones?