Continuing from yesterday on the topic of how to eat while recovering from Lyme disease, there is the egg.
Before Lyme took over my life, I was a little bit sick and getting a little bit sicker, more tired, more impatient, more indecisive, slower, etc. every week. I decided I needed a vacation and went to China for 2.5 weeks. I ate lots of great food in all sorts of sketchy places. No problem. Then in a restaurant, in a major city, I ate something that gave me explosive diarrhea.
After that, things went down hill.
When I got home, I had all sorts of digestive problems, which I thought might be a parasite or something of the sort. I ate normally, or actually more food than normal, because it didn’t stay down, or if it did, it exited in a hurry.
I ate a lot of Thai food because I craved it. There’s lots of good Thai food near where I worked and where I live, and in San Francisco, where I went for work when I got back from China. Most of the stuff I like at Thai restaurants includes some fried egg in it.
Then my legs started feeling funny.
Then I developed an aversion to eggs.
I somehow knew I should stop eating them. I don’t know how exactly. There wasn’t a clear cause and effect at that point.
All this happened winter 2007 as my life came crashing down and I got too sick to work and too feeble to walk. By Labor Day, I had gone through 2 rounds of antibiotics for unidentified parasites, had taken 3 weeks of Chinese herbs and didn’t yet have a diagnosis for the very disabling non-digestive problems. But I was feeling a bit improved. So when I got a hankering for pancakes, I didn’t hesitate.
That’s when I saw the effects of eggs. About 2 hours after I ate them in the pancakes, I started to feel funny. My legs, which had been able to carry me around the block with the aid of a cane for the previous 10 days, suddenly didn’t want to stand anymore. (I was walking around the block at the time the sensation began.) I almost collapsed. Then my blood pressure dropped. I got dizzy, almost to the point of fainting. I felt nauseated. And, my vision started to go white. I got a headache that lasted several days. A few weeks later, my joints started hurting for the first time (besides two bouts of atypical carpal tunnel in previous years).
I knew that the only thing different from what I’d been eating for the previous several months was eggs.
So I avoided eggs again.
The following spring, I did all the food allergy testing. Eggs didn’t show up. But I knew better than to try them. The other thing that we didn’t test for but I figured out myself was almond skins. (That’s another story altogether.)
Fast forward to Thanksgiving 2009, a full 2 years after my previous egg encounter. I decided I wanted to have a chocolate chip cookie, freshly baked by my sister. I figured I would feel pretty sick the next day from the sugar, butter and chocolate. I forgot that most cookie recipes include eggs. (This is because I used to bake delicious eggless chocolate chip cookies because I always had bananas in the house but not eggs when I was in the mood to bake.)
I ate one small one. I said to mysely, what the heck, whether I eat one or two, I’ll feel the same tomorrow.
With less than a bite left of the second one, I felt a really bad headache coming on. Uh-oh. I immediately thought of eggs and confirmed that my sister used them. I started to feel off-balance (sitting at the table). I went to lie down on my parents’ bed. When I got up, my peripheral vision was gone. My Thanksgiving Day was over. As I hobbled home, my legs wouldn’t go. There’s no other way to explain it. It was a problem I had for a long time before that, but that had cleared up a bunch with antibiotics. In my mind, I was taking a 12″ stride. But if you looked at my feet, the toes of my front foot were only 4 or 5″ ahead of the toes of my back foot.
No more eggs since then.
I saw a doctor in June 2010 for a second opinion about intravenous Rocephin. I mentioned the egg thing. She got really excited. She had read about something with IgA attacking the nervous system in response to eggs in patients with immune disorders. (I didn’t know I had an immune disorder.) She looked it up while she was sitting with me.
She told me two things. First, it might be reversible. Once the infections are all gone, a series of intravenous immunoglobulin (IV Ig) might help. We’ll see after all these infections (and any others I discover) are gone if I want to go down that route. Second, she told me I had to be really strict about avoiding eggs in the future. Apparently, my immune system can do permanent damage to my nervous system when it is triggered by eggs. In addition to consuming eggs as food, I have to be really careful about vaccinations.
Point taken. No need to break anything else on my body.
It’s funny. I feel hopeful about getting rid of all the allergies. I feel almost hopeless about eggs. Sometimes I want them or food that contains them. Other times, I would settle for being able to eat a slice of pizza.
Coiling
It’s been a conundrum. Coiling last night put me in bad shape this morning. I even felt pretty bad after I coiled. I had a lot of trouble sleeping. My spine and paraspinal muscles were killing me this morning. I’ve been tired all day with an intense headache and lots of floaters in my vision.
I’m clearly Herxing from the Bartonella/Babesia treatment.
I counted the days before I need to coil for Lyme again. Monday is the deadline. I urgently want to do it tonight. But I don’t want to overdo it and potentially strain my liver.
- Candida, abdomen, 10 minutes
Detox
I ran out of kombucha (again) and couldn’t get to the store today. However, the reason I couldn’t go was that someone was helping me clean my apartment. She tackled my kitchen. I’m hoping to start brewing my own kombucha over the weekend. If that works out, I’ll only need to purchase it for another week or two.
- homeopathic support
- juiced greens
- skin brushing
- BioMat/infrared heat (last night 1 hour setting 3, 1 hour sleeping on setting one, this morning, 30 minutes on setting 4)
- castor oil pack on liver
Body
Well, I said most of it in the coiling section. Last night, no night sweats, but light sweats this morning. Vivid dreams in the early morning.
Today, lots of pain in the back of my head, neck, shoulders and upper back. Some irritation in my right ear, popping in my left jaw. Knees and feet and left hip socket area hurt, too. I needed to lie down twice this afternoon from the fatigue. My mind is somewhat restless with ideas of what I want to be doing other than resting.
Good stuff
Mom is back in Jackson Heights. It is a relief for so many reasons, even though I’d rather she and my sister and her family get to spend more time together.
Someone helped me a lot by cleaning my apartment today. I laundered all the linens. The place feels so fresh.
Five good friends came by tonight to hang out and give me support.
I still love golden delicious apples with peanut butter, and I had half of one today.
Categories: healing process, Herx reactions, using the coil machine
Tags: babesia, bartonella, biomat, detox, food, how-to, lyme, symptoms
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- Allergic Reaction « Coiling for Lyme
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Coiling for Lyme 
Did you get your Kombucha brewing up and running? It’s super easy and soooo delicious =) Here’s a quick and easy recipe to make your own! http://www.kombuchakamp.com/kombucha-recipe
Thanks for the recipe. I used to brew kombucha myself for several months. Now it’s a matter of having a half hour in which I’m not exhausted and I have no pressing issues to deal with…