Yesterday I finished the first final draft on parts one and two of my memoir. I say "first final" because I'm sure there will be a second and third final draft, quite possibly a fourth. But the point is I made major changes based on feedback from someone who knows what she's doing. Up next is the third section. But before I started, I just wanted to say, "Hooray for me!"
I've been trying to make myself feel as sick possible on my Lyme meds, and I've found this to be a pretty unpredictable process. Yesterday, for example, I thought I'd feel OK, based where I was in my detox/medical schedule. Not so. Sometimes whole days are really rough. Other days I'll feel good for a few hours, then awful for a few, then good again.
Still, everyday I've had at least a half an hour when I can focus enough to do a little work on my memoir. For the past few weeks that's meant going through the manuscript and looking at just one aspect of it for coherence and consistency--how I describe a certain friend and tell her story, for example. This has leant itself well to the type of short windows of concentration I have right now.
The most important thing, which I have to keep reminding myself over and over, is that I can't put writing before medical considerations. Not now. I'm fighting to get my life back once and for all, so every decision has to be about hitting Lyme as hard as I can. I've told myself I have to increase the Lyme herbs, as tempting as it has been at moments to increase them slowly so that I can focus better on writing the next day, or have energy for babysitting my neice and nephew. But that's not where it's at right now. I want my whole life back, not just parts of it.
Still, it's nice that incidentally I've gotten a little work done.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
IN THE GROOVE: CHASING THE HERX DAY 13
It's day 13 of trying to herx as much as possible. It's day 5 on Banderol, meaning I am doing the Banderol + Samento combination, and the Clarithromycin + Diflucan combination. I woke up today feeling very Lyme funky. It was nausea that woke me up, actually. Fatigue built up throughout the morning as I was writing. After a couple hours of slowing-to-a-crawl work, I called it quits and went into detox mode.
And this is what I mean by detox:
Water enema
Coffee enema
Vitamin C
Liver detox drink (Charcoal, Cholestyramine, Bentonite Clay, fiber, veggie juice, cayenne pepper)
Plenty of Magnesium, Quercetin, electrolyes, and 90 % dark chocolate (all this after lunch and long after the Cholestyramine drink)
Lunch was a giant plate of collard greens, raw beets, a little goat cheese. Dessert meant devouring half a lemon, including the rind. My diet isn't always this extreme, but on detox days I go with what I'm craving and it's usually maniacally healthy.
I rested for an hour after lunch, and that meant primarily icing my ear and back of head so the swelling in my lymph nodes will go down (I dozed off for a few minutes in the midde), went swimming at 4:15. It was like swimming with cement arms for the first twenty minutes, so I told myself not to worry about going fast (Ha! As if I could have!). By the second half, it was easy to pick up the pace.
After dinner I felt so normal I didn't even think about how I was feeling.
I've had this ongoing project of making injera-- Ethopian flatbread-- from scratch, including the sourdough starter, with 100% teff, which is the traditional Ethiopian flour. This is not an easy thing to do. Almost all injera Ethopian restaurants is made with refined wheat flour and therefore inedible for me.
I'd already botched the injera twice with dubious recipes I found online. This was my lucky third recipe, lucky third time. I'd started the whole process, with the sourdough fermentation and all, last Wednesday. Tonight was the night to cook it, so after dinner I set to work. I was so preoccupied with whether the sourdough part had worked and if I had thinned the batter enough and how long to cook the bread before putting the lid over the frying pan that and how long to keep the lid on the frying pan that I forgot entirely to think about whether I was herxing.
Just in case you've never felt the fatigue of Lyme disease, it's impossible not to think about the fatigue of Lyme disease unless you aren't actually feeling the fatigue. Trust me. I've got years of experience in this department.
I was so caught up in the beautiful fact that I was actually, successfully making injera, that it took me a full 45 minutes to notice I'd also pulled out of the herx. Completely. So completely that after letting the bread cool, layering it in aluminum foil and storing it in a tupperware in the fridge, I'm now spending twenty minutes writing this post instead of crawling to bed.
So take that, Lyme disease!
Now it truly is time for bed. In half an hour I'll have swallowed my next round of Lyme meds and be lying down to sleep. By morning I'll be back in the Kung Fu fight. I'm almost looking forward to it.
And this is what I mean by detox:
Water enema
Coffee enema
Vitamin C
Liver detox drink (Charcoal, Cholestyramine, Bentonite Clay, fiber, veggie juice, cayenne pepper)
Plenty of Magnesium, Quercetin, electrolyes, and 90 % dark chocolate (all this after lunch and long after the Cholestyramine drink)
Lunch was a giant plate of collard greens, raw beets, a little goat cheese. Dessert meant devouring half a lemon, including the rind. My diet isn't always this extreme, but on detox days I go with what I'm craving and it's usually maniacally healthy.
I rested for an hour after lunch, and that meant primarily icing my ear and back of head so the swelling in my lymph nodes will go down (I dozed off for a few minutes in the midde), went swimming at 4:15. It was like swimming with cement arms for the first twenty minutes, so I told myself not to worry about going fast (Ha! As if I could have!). By the second half, it was easy to pick up the pace.
After dinner I felt so normal I didn't even think about how I was feeling.
I've had this ongoing project of making injera-- Ethopian flatbread-- from scratch, including the sourdough starter, with 100% teff, which is the traditional Ethiopian flour. This is not an easy thing to do. Almost all injera Ethopian restaurants is made with refined wheat flour and therefore inedible for me.
I'd already botched the injera twice with dubious recipes I found online. This was my lucky third recipe, lucky third time. I'd started the whole process, with the sourdough fermentation and all, last Wednesday. Tonight was the night to cook it, so after dinner I set to work. I was so preoccupied with whether the sourdough part had worked and if I had thinned the batter enough and how long to cook the bread before putting the lid over the frying pan that and how long to keep the lid on the frying pan that I forgot entirely to think about whether I was herxing.
Just in case you've never felt the fatigue of Lyme disease, it's impossible not to think about the fatigue of Lyme disease unless you aren't actually feeling the fatigue. Trust me. I've got years of experience in this department.
I was so caught up in the beautiful fact that I was actually, successfully making injera, that it took me a full 45 minutes to notice I'd also pulled out of the herx. Completely. So completely that after letting the bread cool, layering it in aluminum foil and storing it in a tupperware in the fridge, I'm now spending twenty minutes writing this post instead of crawling to bed.
So take that, Lyme disease!
Now it truly is time for bed. In half an hour I'll have swallowed my next round of Lyme meds and be lying down to sleep. By morning I'll be back in the Kung Fu fight. I'm almost looking forward to it.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
IN THE CRUSH: CHASING THE HERX DAY 6
It's been almost a week since my Eureka moment last Wednesday, when I decided I needed to get as big a Herxheimer reaction as possible, for as long as possible, in order to finally kick this last bit of Lyme. Since then, by ratcheting up my Samento (herbal drops) and Diflucan (prescription meds) I've managed to crank up the fatigue, joint pain, rapid heart beat, and noise sensitivity.
I've even had little shimmers of brain fog--when I couldn't quite put sentences together or mixed up some pretty basic words. I was sending a text to my mom yesterday and realized I didn't know how to spell "heaven." I think that qualifies as brain fog. I gave myself a silent cheer. Good for me!
I'm coming to realize that one of my biggest Herx symptoms is the crash depression. This one I'm not so good at cheering for. I suddenly get overwhelmed by how lonely I feel, how desperate my situation is, how terrible it is to have illness keep me from writing enough, how high the chances are that Lyme will ruin my relationship with The Poet. And on and on.
I try to just wait these times out, let myself cry, then get some exercise or do my detox routine. It helps a lot to have learned from Pamela Weintraub's book, "Cure Unknown," that it is very common for Lyme patients to experience increased psychological symptoms when they go on antibiotics. So yes, the even the depression is part of the Herx. I should welcome it as part of the healing process. Easier said than done!
I've even had little shimmers of brain fog--when I couldn't quite put sentences together or mixed up some pretty basic words. I was sending a text to my mom yesterday and realized I didn't know how to spell "heaven." I think that qualifies as brain fog. I gave myself a silent cheer. Good for me!
I'm coming to realize that one of my biggest Herx symptoms is the crash depression. This one I'm not so good at cheering for. I suddenly get overwhelmed by how lonely I feel, how desperate my situation is, how terrible it is to have illness keep me from writing enough, how high the chances are that Lyme will ruin my relationship with The Poet. And on and on.
I try to just wait these times out, let myself cry, then get some exercise or do my detox routine. It helps a lot to have learned from Pamela Weintraub's book, "Cure Unknown," that it is very common for Lyme patients to experience increased psychological symptoms when they go on antibiotics. So yes, the even the depression is part of the Herx. I should welcome it as part of the healing process. Easier said than done!
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