I’ve just started up coiling again. I didn’t coil from December 13 to January 7. I stopped because I was traveling to the East Coast to see my family. It was also an experiment to see what happened when I didn’t coil. I learned a few things.
Babesia
When I stopped coiling, I knew I wasn’t at the end of the Babesia cycle. I was still getting occasional night sweats and odd dreams. My headaches were mostly gone. Then I stopped.
Initially, the night sweats got much worse. Then they calmed down. I didn’t have much in the way of Babesia symptoms for the first two weeks after I stopped coiling. Then I started to get tired faster, with less activity, earlier in the day. It hasn’t felt like a full relapse, just when I get tired I get really tired. The night sweats eventually stopped completely. I did get a few headaches, but not the multi-day, blinding headaches of previous bouts of Babesia. My sensitivity to light increased after the initial 2 weeks and has been persistent since then.
As I start to coil again, I’m doing one infection at a time, beginning with Babesia. I considered the possibility that my body has been able to keep it under control. So I tested yesterday with 10 minutes of coiling my heart/lungs at 570 Hz and had a night sweat towards morning, complete with crazy dreams.
Today I’m coiling twice, 10 minutes on my heart/lungs in the morning and 10 minutes on my liver before bed. Tomorrow I’ll add in the rest of my body for both sessions. Friday I’ll cap it off with a daily 10 minute session on my spleen in the middle of the day. That was my routine throughout autumn. I expect to be doing it for about 3 weeks beyond when all the sweats and headaches disappear.
I decided to try to tackle this to its natural endpoint of being truly dormant with the hopes that I can get another several months of Babesia-symptom-free living. With any luck, I’ll be focusing on other infections instead.
Bartonella
The first thing that changed when I stopped coiling for Bartonella was that months of constipation disappeared. It was amazing to see the difference in abdominal swelling. My clothes fit better. I was relieved to not have the huge, hard belly for a few weeks.
About 18 days into my coiling break, I started having what I think are Bartonella symptoms: tingling and pain along the nerve pathways in my arms and legs. I didn’t get the hand and foot pain of a more intense Bartonella attack. I didn’t get the abdominal problems, though now I’m starting up with constipation–even though I haven’t started coiling yet! I’m also starting to have pain in my sacrum and stiffness/pain in my hips. I’m not sure if this is Bartonella or Lyme.
When I left, my food sensitivities were ebbing. They did eventually get worse again. Only I’m not sure if it is the Bartonella infection getting bigger or if I was too careless with my food consumption.
In any case, I’ll start coiling for Bartonella over the weekend. I’m still working out the plan for ramping it up. I anticipate that once I don’t have to coil for Babesia anymore that I’ll be doing Bartonella scans over my whole body twice a day. But that won’t be for a while.
Food Sensitivities
The moral of the story is that when I get a big reaction to foods, it is easy to avoid them. Otherwise…let’s just say I like to eat.
Before I stopped coiling, I was cheating about once a week. A few corn chips. A taste of home-fries. A slice of bread. I had reactions to these foods, but nothing nearly as bad as it used to be. In early December, I got short headaches (2-3 hours shortly after eating the offending food), slight bowel irritation, and a single day of abdominal swelling. No biggie. Wheat was the biggest problem, giving me joint aches for a day or two after consuming it.
While I was away, I cheated a little bit more. My most frequent offense was avocado. I just wanted it. I ate it in my sister’s extremely yummy salads. I had it too often. And I think it contributed (along with my other transgressions) to a week of loose stools bordering on diarrhea.
I wasn’t too upset about the loose stools because it felt like a good cleaning-out of my gut after the months of constipation. What I didn’t like was the abdominal swelling. It was both uncomfortable in its own right and made my clothes uncomfortable as well.
Towards the end of my trip, I went back on the stricter diet. I thought I should stop irritating my gut and cooperate with it (my usual attitude towards my body). Also, as I got sick with a much more virulent respiratory infection, I didn’t want to overtax any other areas in my body.
Lyme
I think that the Lyme season was over by the time I stopped. I’m guessing that I won’t have Lyme symptoms until the season starts in February. If it is anything like last year, when they start it is sudden and obvious.
One of the things I’ve read about Lyme (and experienced for myself) is that it suppresses both the immune system and the rapidly reproducing microbes that cause colds and flus. I’m assuming my Lyme infection is pretty dormant because I’ve had a variety of upper respiratory infections (URIs) migrating around my system (sinuses, then ears, then throat, then back to sinuses) until a few days before I left New York. Then it got really bad. Body aches for a day. Then a killer sinus infection that went into my throat and trachea and was creeping into my bronchial tubes.
Antibiotics
It’s true. I’m not as much of a purist as some coilers. When my URI started creeping down towards my lungs and my coughing kept me up all night 3 nights in a row, I decided to take antibiotics. Admittedly, I was nervous that I would interrupt my coiling program, prolonging the day when I’m finally free of tick-borne illnesses.
My doctor was willing to discuss which of two antibiotics he thought were most appropriate for my symptoms: Zithromax and Levaquin. We went with Zithromax. Levaquin is one of the better drugs for treating Bartonella (as well as URIs) and I was afraid it would send the Bartonella into a dormant state, making the coiling sessions less effective for an extended period of time. Oral Zithromax isn’t terribly effective against Bartonella or Lyme, so I’m hoping that it doesn’t push either infection into the dormant cyst form that is unaffected by coiling.
Meanwhile, I added 727 Hz, to my coiling rotation, as it is supposed to help with URIs, with or without antibiotics. Yesterday I did 2 minutes on my chest, one time. Today, I did 2 minutes each on my chest and face (trying to get my sinuses), and I’ll repeat it before bed.
Last night, in addition to the effectiveness of the antibiotics, my chest (trachea, bronchi) was much better than my sinuses. So maybe it’s doing something. Or maybe the antibiotics are more effective on my chest than my sinuses. I don’t really know.
Today my cough is much less frequent even if my breathing passages feel raw.
The final consideration with antibiotics is gut flora. I’m taking my usual probiotics, 3LAC, twice a day. I hope this is enough to prevent yeast proliferation.
Hard to learn lessons
I wanted to do everything. I wanted to be with people. I wanted to go out. I wanted to participate in excursions with my family. I wanted to visit friends. I didn’t want to be sick anymore.
Long before the tick-borne illnesses became disabling, they took a toll on my life. I was more tired than I’d been before I got infected. I was more tired than my colleagues and friends. I pushed my limits on a fairly regular basis because I wanted to do everything, just like my peers and my family. Then I would crash and wait until I was well enough to push my limits again.
This trip, I pushed my limits. I don’t like to keep in mind that even though I’ve healed quite a bit, I’m still more limited than many of the healthy (and healthier) people around me. I think that’s why I never got rid of the URI (and instead got infected by something worse). I think that’s why I crashed for my last few days in New York.
I don’t regret my various activities: playing with my nephew, going to the movies with my dad, going to a college basketball game with my in-laws, eating my sister’s yummy food, visiting with my friends in DC, hosting a party with my husband and parents in NY, spending New Year’s Day at Mitsuwa in NJ with one of my buddies, staying up late the night before I came back to CA hang out with my adopted sister. All that was fun and necessary and part of why I love life and want so desperately to be well again.
Categories: healing process, using the coil machine
Tags: babesia, bartonella, food allergies, lyme
1 reply ›
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Coiling for Lyme 
“All that was fun and necessary and part of why I love life and want so desperately to be well again.”
So very true.