Pain, Pain, you're driving me insane!

Wow and holy cow! I am amazed, dazzled and dare I say impressed that I am experiencing such an extraordinarily painful herx from reintroducing the A-Bart tincture. I knew it was effective, but this comes as quite a shock to me. This is the remedy that the MD said to reintroduce even if it was only 1/2 drop a day. She said put one drop in a glass of water and throw half of it out if I had to. Whatever it took to be able to take it and stay on it, gradually increasing without creating a herx. 

Boy, did I overshoot my limit. I was up to something like 21 drops a day this spring. I know the bacterium have been having a heyday during my antibiotic, antimicrobial, antimalarial hiatus and I have been acutely aware of becoming sicker. However, I was still floored - uh, this time literally - by the impact of 6 drops of this stuff. 3 drops in the morning, 3 drops in the evening and the next day was excruciating! I could hardly get out of bed, I was writhing in pain, taking a fair amount of pain drugs, exhausted beyond belief and unable to achieve any level of comfort or distraction. I was at a point that I just can't describe and if you're lucky, you'll never know the feeling. The pain was my entire universe; one I didn't want to live in. I drug myself outside to the backyard and decided to try to create something beautiful, despite my condition. I was going to hurt and be miserable no matter what. I could only carry 2 bricks at a time, but I slowly began to complete the outline of the labyrinth in my backyard. Every step was agony, I was unstable and dizzy, but I had to DO something.  After only a few minutes, perhaps twenty, I came back indoors, drank some water, went to bed, and slept for 12 hours.

That day, I took 4 drops - 2 in the morning and 2 at night. I had another night of waking up in breath-taking pain and was surprised again at the impact of 4 little drops. I still had an amazing amount of pain, mostly in my hands, feet and hips, but the difference that morning was that my pain wasn't so intense that it obliterated everything else. I could actually feel some excitement about getting back on track with my bug-slaying duties. I am so grateful for the simple pleasures! 

Today, I took one drop this morning and am suspiciously eying the bottle wondering if I should take one tonight. I read the label again today and noticed the suggested dose. I about fell off the couch. "Take one drop orally two times per week or as suggested by your health care practitioner." I somehow overlooked what a wallop this stuff packs!

In other news, I saw the immunologist at UVA today and totally loved the guy. He is following the same protocol as my Lyme doc in MD had suggested - to give me a pneumonia vaccine and re-check my immune responses in a couple of weeks. He also took scores of vials of blood. More than anyone else so far in one sitting. Although he is doing all kinds of testing, he thinks it likely that I am in the 3% of the populace that shows very low immune numbers, but their systems function just fine. Either that, or he's caught me in the middle of an immune system crash. I can't remember the words he used, but I'll inquire more once we know something. We shall see.

Delightfully, a new bed is finally making its way into my home after years of knowing how desperately I needed one. I have finally taken the plunge and truly hope I made a good choice. It will likely be here before the end of the week. Oh! And speaking of the weekend, I'm going for my first rife session on Sunday! I'm totally exfrighted! Again, I don't know how long before the herx hits. I would guess the next day unless it's super powerful like the IV Rocephin was for me a decade ago. That hit within hours and hit hard. It will be interesting to see what happens. Thankfully, she's close enough that I'm not too worried about getting there and back.

So much is happening on the healthcare front, it's amazing. I'm feeling very blessed and lucky to have encountered the people that I have along my path. It's so good to feel optimistic and have clear next steps even though it's also easy for me to get overwhelmed by the enormous to do list with doctors and insurance companies. What a drag.

Alright Lymies, stay tuned and I'll tell you how things go. I hope that my experience is helping someone out there somewhere along the line. It seems there is no one remedy that works for everyone which is another challenging layer to this whole crazy business, but the information really helps in making empowered decisions since, as my partner would say, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one in real life."  Such is the case for many of us battling tick-borne diseases.