Lyme Boot Camp

I've said that I hope & believe I may come out of this lyme disease feeling better than before.
I believe this is true in some areas of my life.
I also have come to terms with the thought that I most likely will never be totally free of lyme disease.

Throughout my life I've been diagnosed with syndromes, diseases and conditions which were tenacious and debilitating. I've  found grappling with and adapting to these situations to be transformative and life changing.

I was able to come through the cancer scare alive and without giving in to harmful procedures and treatments but I know that all of us have pre-cancerous and cancerous  cells in our bodies throughout our lives. Some of us , given the right (actually the wrong) circumstances end up succumbing to cancer, while others don't, or manage to reverse the 'wrong circumstances' and render themselves as unsuitable hosts for cancer. I feel lyme disease is similar in this respect. I don't believe eradicating the spirochetes completely is possible.  I would love to see some studies done on how people with lyme can set up the right circumstances in their bodies to keep the spirochete population down and to somehow live copacetically  with the spirochetes which still reside in their bodies.

I never knew much about Lyme but have been researching a lot in the 9 months since I was re-bitten. On a state website for Michigan Natural Resources I read that:  " Wild animals such as deer, raccoon and mice show no signs and apparently suffer no ill effects from the disease" .
Why ? Is there anything that could be duplicated or initiated in the physiology of a human to that could set up an inhospitable terrain for the spirochetes ? 

After the scary episodes I described in my last blog, I took some time off from supplements. After a few days off of my protocol I still felt the presence of an invasion and disruption in my body.  It's better, even much better, than the initial crisis stage and than the recent heart & digestive episodes.  I can still take walks and do some work ion the garden but my sense of balance, and cognitive processes are deeply affected - as is my energy, strength and emotional equilibrium. I lose my grip on things and have broken more things than usual .  I've always been a "Calamity Jane" but then the doc believes I've had this a long long time.  I slowly re-introduced some of my supplements and am going to re-design the next stage of my care to focus on building up my physical emotional and mental health. I'll still need to keep on working on keeping the spirochete population in my body down, but not in as aggressive way as I was at the beginning.  I  am also focusing on a much ignored aspect of human health. My spiritual health and connection.

With the lyme disease undiagnosed for so many years I've become accustomed to a low level of well being. With no doctors able to help me to improve and/or change my physical condition I had to change and strengthen my thoughts and emotions around and about my health. I'm addressing this in many ways and one is to see a therapist for a few sessions (3 I think is what it will end up being since my deductible for mental health services is 3,000.00 and I have to pay $ 75.00 I think, for each session out of pocket. I've only seen a therapist once, for one appointment which was around supporting a family member in their search for emotional healing. At that time I was told by the therapist that with the life I'd had it was a wonder I was still so well functioning and well adjusted. She said that in her professional opinion I had post traumatic stress disorder but I had somehow managed to come to terms with it, and to live with it admirably. I had really given a lot of time and effort to sorting through the many traumas in my life and I have always had a strong spiritual belief to help me. Many things have happened since I initially saw that therapist  which have added to the load - such as being the only person taking care of my mom who had Alzheimer's disease for 6 years,  and having a foster child who spent week-ends with me who disappeared (not while with me) and was never found.   Being re-bitten and diagnosed with lyme was the straw that broke the camel's back.  I have always been the strong one. Now I sometimes feel vulnerable fragile and shaky. 

Still, I look for the message, the lesson, the challenge in this situation and yes, I WILL come out of it with more wholeness in some ways than I had before. Lyme has allowed me to cry for instance. As a person raised by a German/Japanese mom, I usually tended to keep a stiff upper lip and soldier on, rarely exhibiting my emotions (the vulnerable ones) even to family.  Lyme has liberated me from this. Somehow being diagnosed with lyme has always helped me to understand myself better. It has stolen my ability to connect the cognitive dots somehow, but it hasn't diminished my inherent intelligence or what I think of as my intelligence .  It's pulled the rug out from under my feet in simple mathematical things such as being able to run a cash register, or understand a camera's instruction book, but I somehow can still enjoy and understand theoretical physics !  It has decimated my once strong and healthy digestive system, and caused me to alter my already healthy eating habits radically but I can still eat and I now almost never allow anything to pass my lips into my body without really paying attention to what it's impact on me will be!  Throughout a good portion of my life I've been severely fatigued and experienced incredible pain , but today I can still stand and walk !

I'm not who I was and HOW I was but I  am learning a lot about how to improve how I feel and also about my strength and resiliency as a human being and how to just surrender to what I can't change and accept the unacceptable while still grasping and holding on to my share of JOY in this life.