My doctor is an angel. When I first went to see him, he told me I’d be coming there for at least a year. Eight or ten months later, I asked him if I would be done in a year. He asked me if I thought I had improved (yes) and if I was more than half way back to my previous level of health (no). He told me that it was a slow process because Lyme bacteria reproduce slowly and that the antibiotics work best when the bacteria are in the vulnerable state of reproduction. I understood what he meant. I also started to realize that I was in this for the long haul and had to give up my plans to set a date in my head for going back to work.
Later in the conversation, I told him I wanted to wait a few days before I started a new medication that was likely to give me a big Herx reaction. I can’t remember now if I wanted to see a friend who was in town that weekend or if it was something else. We agreed that I should generally start new drugs on Mondays so that I could most easily reach his office for questions about how I was reacting over the first few days. Then he said something that stuck with me, “This is a marathon, not a sprint. You can’t rush through this and get better fast. It just isn’t possible. So take your time and do what is right for you.” He went on to remind me how weak my body was at that point, and slowing down gave my body a chance to get stronger as I fought the bacteria, processed the toxins they release when they die and processed the drugs I was using to kill them.
All that advice is helping me to realized that while what I do today with the coil machine matters, it won’t make or break my ability to recover from these diseases. I am deciding between doing another 15 seconds on the Lyme frequency or trying 15 seconds on the Bartonella frequency. Yesterday I was panicked that the Bartonella is getting out of control. But my science-oriented mind was leaning toward trying the Lyme frequency again, both to see if I get the same reaction and to try some different ways to boost my body in detoxifying from the Herx reaction.
Last night, I started a homeopathic protocol to help with the detoxification process. It adds a new variable. This morning, the chest discomfort is minimal but not gone; it is at the low level I’ve been experiencing on and off since a week after I stopped taking antibiotics. I have my usual morning headache in the back of my head, rather than the severe, sharp pain of a Herx reaction. I’m seeing a lot of floaters in my eyes (which definitely changes the look of the screen as I write). My joints, especially in my fingers and wrists are a bit achy. All of that sounds like the Lyme creeping back up and calls for a Lyme treatment today.
There is one other symptom I woke up with. My hands and arms were on the pillow above my head, and my hands were tingling. That hearkens back to summer 2001, when I got diagnosed with atypical carpel tunnel…back in the first months of symptoms that would get seven years to diversify, accumulate, and intensify before being diagnosed.
Categories: healing process, Herx reactions
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Coiling for Lyme 
1. What exactly is a Herx reaction?
2. Any chance the joint pain and carpel tunnel ghost are related to all the typing? (I hope not.)