This day last year, Joe proposed to me. It was a beautiful interaction that launched a new episode in my life. It is a reminder that things do get better as life goes on. I’m happy today remembering it. I’m also happy looking  back to 2012, that my life started picking up after 5 years, and I’m feeling like I have a present as well as a future.

As always, I find every little reason to celebrate. Today’s anniversary is a wonderful counterpoint to the hard days that aren’t over yet, but are getting less frequent.

Headache and Remedy #1

As I left Hawaii at the end of my honeymoon, I got a migraine. It was a bona fide migraine with an aura and steadily increasing pain on one side of my head. My solution was to drink a can of cola. It worked to stop the increase in pain, though it didn’t get rid of the headache. I still had light sensitivity. I was slightly nauseated from the corn syrup (as a result of my corn allergy). All in all, however, the pain was manageable and I was able to sleep on the plane coming home. Instead of being incapacitated for several days, the migraine was over in about a day and a half.

This remedy only works because I don’t have any other caffeine in my diet. The caffeine in the cola was a shock to my vascular system and “broke” the migraine, i.e., stopped its progression. I had read about this before. It was the first time I tried it. It worked.

Headache and Remedy #2

The headaches I get from Bartonella and from Bartonella herxes are tension headaches. The headaches usually encompass the crown of my head, down the sides to my ears and down the front to my eyeballs. They make it impossible to concentrate. Usually I want to rip my own head off to ease the pain and pressure.

Last night, as he has done before, my husband Joe offered to rub my head. I find this process excessively painful. I agreed to it anyway because, from experience, I knew it would get rid of the headache. He felt around for knots in my neck and worked those first. I didn’t holler aloud, though I was screaming inside, as he pushed on and loosened the few knots he found. That part got rid of 60% of the pain, reducing its geography and intensity. Then I asked him to work on my scalp muscles. He felt around for a tight muscle ridge. He pushed on it. I wanted to curse like Steve Carell in “40 Year Old Virgin” when he was having his chest waxed. I didn’t make a noise because I didn’t want him to stop until the ridge relaxed. I breathed into it. When he finished, the only pain left was in my eyeballs. With only that pain, I was able to sleep.

Bartonella Herxes Revisited

The headache was only the most extreme of the herx symptoms I’ve had since I started using the more aggressive protocol for Bartonella. The headache was reminiscent of the recurring headaches I had during autumn and of a few I’ve had in February and March when I increased the coiling times.

The other symptoms that have come back since last Friday when I began the more aggressive treatment are:

• pain in my hands, upper arms, feet and calves when I get up in the morning
• sharp, knife-like pains in the soles of my feet when I first stand up in the morning
• insomnia, specifically, waking up multiple times during the night
• tingling in my arms and legs
• shooting pains emanating from my hip joint and going down my outer legs
• pain in my spine bones and in my sacrum
• tenderness in the back of my head and the base of my neck
• constipation
• abdominal swelling
• pain in my lower abdomen
• nausea after eating
• acne on my butt cheeks

The constellation of symptoms tells me that coiling more was the right choice. I’m not sure if I’ll reconfigure my coiling plan again when all these symptoms die down. For now, I’m getting through it a little at a time. I suppose I’ll get through this infection faster than with the previous coiling plan. I’m glad I waited and worked my way up to it rather than hurting myself by doing too much too soon.

There has been one change to the coiling plan. I’ve gotten pain towards the back of my hip joint. So I’m coiling my butt cheeks as part of the whole body coiling. It used to be that the joint below them was covered by the coiling I do for the back of my ilium on each side, my sacrum and the bottom of my butt (where it meets my legs). But now that I’ve gained back the weight I lost when I got sick and my butt is back to its normal size, I’ve needed to add in one more spot to coil on each side.

Pedaling and Palpitations

I went for a bike ride with Joe on Sunday. I think, based on a rough estimate of a map, that we went 4 miles. There were some small inclines (hills would be an overstatement) and a fair amount of wind. I pushed as hard as I could. Until I couldn’t. We turned around when I decided I needed to get off the bike. I was immediately dizzy. My heart was racing and my blood pressure dropped. I crouched near the ground so I wouldn’t faint. I guess I pushed it too far. Oops.

When I felt a little better, we rode back. Still windy and up and down inclines. Only I was more tired on the way back. When we reached the car, my blood pressure dropped again. I had to lie in the car and put my legs up for a good 20 minutes before I could stand up and walk again.

This hasn’t happened in quite some time. For a long time, I thought this was from Babesia. Now I think any of the illnesses can reduce my body’s ability to handle stress. On days that I coil for Lyme as well as the first subsequent days, I have heart issues, especially going up and down the stairs. I think I still have problems with exertion. In my recent attempts at exercise, I haven’t had this extreme blood pressure drop until Sunday. No big deal. It’s good to find out what my limits are. Then I as I heal more, I can move beyond them.

I had to rest most of today to recuperate from the exercise. Since today is a Lyme coiling day, it works out alright.

Lyme Poem

In celebration of National Poetry Month, I composed this poem today. It is an expression of my life in Aprils past, from 2007-2010.

Dreams

What good are dreams?

Lying in bed all day and night
What do I have but dreams?

The future eludes me
This illness precludes my life

I don’t know when I’ll walk again
Or what my future will bring

Don’t know how to heal
Or how long this imprisonment will be

I can’t make plans
As the days close in on me

What is there left for me?

Dreams and dreams
Of impossible things
Of what may be or not

Escape and adventure
Love and success
A world outside my room

What good are dreams?

Disclaimer

• Whirlwind
• A Question of Timing

Categories: healing process, Herx reactions, using the coil machine

Tags: bartonella, lyme, poetry, symptoms

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