Well, I spent most of last night in the Urgent Care area of the local Emergency Room taking antibiotics for a kidney infection. (The Levaquin should reduce Bartonella symptoms for a little while. In fact, no hand or foot pain when I woke up this morning.) The kidney stone I mentioned yesterday hasn’t moved at all in the past two weeks (neither has the smaller one I didn’t bother to write about). Now it’s more complicated. The doc there wants me to see a urologist about surgery. Oh joy.
It looks like my coil machine experiment for Lyme disease is on hold because I need to go easy on my kidneys for a while (and not release a lot of toxins for them to process). Meanwhile, I’m looking up remedies that help break up or dissolve kidney stones so I don’t have undergo any significantly invasive procedures. I’m looking at herbs and minerals and homeopathic support for my kidneys. I’ve never thought about kidneys so much before, not even the word kidney or renal or anything like that. Anyway, I found some coil frequencies for kidney stones. I’m not sure how long to do them for. This time, I’m not so interested in being scientific and taking it slowly. I’m going to try a few remedies at the same time and see if we can get the pipes flowing again.
Meanwhile, I’ve changed my mind about the whole sprint vs marathon analogy. When I was a Girl Scout, my troop volunteered to give out water during the NYC marathon every year. The first several clumps of runners (people with similar paces run in clumps) would run right past us, attempting to grab a cup without missing a step. They would drink it and throw it on themselves and us, or if they didn’t manage to grasp the cup properly, they would end up dumping the water on us. No big deal, the marathon organizers provided us with rain ponchos (very convenient for camping the rest of the year). The runners in the next several clumps would slow down to get the water, but keep moving. Then the rest of the runners would stop and drink, and start running again after a moment of rest. Those were the ones who just wanted to finish the race.
Last night in the ER, I was thinking about an altogether different race. I read about it in a book called, Place of the Pretend People: Gifts from a Yup’ik Eskimo Village, by Carolyn Kremers. It is a, well race might imply too much of this is about speed, competitive trek across the wilderness in Alaska. The goal is to get to the finish line or to the pickup point 55 miles into the 160 mile trek without dying. At a certain level, no help is available, only what you bring (which can include a companion or a team) with you, what you’ve learned and trained for before the race, and what you figure out along the way. No one can rescue you if you screw up and run out of food or break a limb or develop hypothermia. But people do it every year to test their limits and succeed against harsh, intimidating obstacles.
I didn’t pick Lyme disease. It found me – I’m sure by random coincidence. It has tested my limits. I’ve been up against harsh, intimidating obstacles, over and over. It has put me in survival mode for years, though I’ve started to live again since summer 2010. It has made me wonder if I get to make it to the finish line and with what permanent physical damage. I’ve always assumed I’ll survive this and move on at some point. I just wonder if I’ll ever get to leave it behind.
Categories: healing process, iatrogenic complications
Tags: bartonella, kidney stones, lyme
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Coiling for Lyme 