The last few days have been quite something. I had two fun adventures on Friday and Saturday, with excellent culinary components. I’ve been experimenting to figure out if Babesia is behind my relapsing fatigue. And I’ve been trying to handle a new problem in my heels and ankles.

Peachy Keen

On Saturday, I went to a stone fruit orchard, called Andy’s Orchard, for an “open house”. Stone fruit is the category that includes peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots and pluots. It was fun to be outside walking around the orchard with my husband and one of my good friends.

But the star of the show was the fruit. Among the three of us, we tasted 80 different varieties of stone fruits. They were amazing in and of themselves. The variety of flavors boggled my mind. One kind had a spicy undertone, like cinnamon and ginger. Another tasted like what you would expect of a perfect peach. The nectarines were firm and juicy. There was a rare-in-the-US-but-an-annual-craze-in-England variety called a Green Gage Plum. The first bite was nothing special. It just tasted sweet. But as I chewed, flavors burst into my mouth in a series, like watching a spectacular fireworks display with my tongue. I couldn’t stop eating them.

After the tasting, we went for a walk around the orchard and got to pick several different varieties from the trees themselves. Whatever we ate onsite  was included in the purchase price. I think I ate a few pounds of fruit. The perfect peach was a Fay-Elberta peach the size of a grapefruit that my husband gently coaxed off a tree. The three of us shared the cool, juicy flesh as it dripped down our arms and faces. Wow.

I even at a few plums that had fallen on the ground. I just wiped them on my pants and hoped that only beneficial bacteria would make it into my gut (and secretly hoped that I would install some beneficial bacteria that I’m not normally exposed to!).

By itself, this was a wonderful day. The food was incredible with no caveats. We spent the afternoon discussing at what point each of us reached bliss and it it was possble to “over-bliss.” And yet, it seemed even more amazing because I’ve only been able to eat peaches, plums and nectarines for a few weeks. Prior to that I hadn’t eaten one (well except when I made a mistake with a shiro, aka, a yellow plum) since 2006. I like kale and greens and such, but it made me rejoice inside to be able to expand the foods  I have access to, especially when there are such yummy, healthy treats in this part of the world.

Food Foibles, Foot Foibles

Now, even though I can eat stone fruits and other foods that contain malvin (usually associated with foods that are red/purple/blue), the rest of my food sensitivities still cause problems. So on Friday, when I went to visit my cousin in Berkeley, and we went to a delicious Mexican eatery, I thought, no problem. But I didn’t respect my body. I consumed tomatoes, wheat and cow dairy. I was okay at first…

During my visit, we went for a very long walk, long enough that my feet hurt when we finally sat down. This has happened before with long walks. I’m fine when I’m on my feet, but as soon as I rest, the soles of my feet begin throbbing.

When I had the inevitable joint pain, a few hours after my inappropriate yet fantastic meal, my ankles became especially inflamed. They hurt a lot when I walked on Friday night. I managed to walk around on Saturday with some discomfort, but I think I made it worse. Sunday and Monday and part of today I was limping around. My pet theory is that I stressed my ankle with all the walking which made it particularly susceptible to inflammation from the offending food.

When I saw my rolfer yesterday, he talked to me about the muscles in my feet, arch and shins. He showed me the ways my arch was low and how that stresses the joint. He did a lot of somewhat painful manipulations on my feet, after which my arches were noticeably higher. My arches still feel higher today.

I think he put me in a good spot for rebuilding the muscles in my lower legs and feet, but my ankle joints are still inflamed. So I’ve taken a few doses of ibuprofen, as I do when my wrists swell up, to get the inflammation to recede. Hopefully by tomorrow, I’ll be more stable on my feet again.

Babesia Experiment

My Babesia experiment has been less conclusive than I had hoped. I coiled for Babesia in ten minute sessions over my spleen or liver once on Thursday and twice on Friday. I had night sweats both nights. I didn’t coil for it on Saturday and had no night sweat. I interpreted this as having reduced the infection load followed by no herx from no coiling.

On Sunday I did a mega-session. I coiled 1 minute on each part of my skeleton, plus 5 minutes each on my liver, spleen and heart (40 minutes total). I expected a night sweat on Sunday night, a big one at that. Instead: nothing. I coiled for ten minutes again yesterday and today, once on spleen, once on liver. No night sweat last night. I’m not really sure how to interpret all this.

Adding to the mix, I had light sensitivity on Friday and Saturday, but no sunshine the past three days, so I’m not sure.

I decided to keep going at ten minutes a day for the rest of the week. If nothing changes, I might call it quits for now and consider than I started having a Babesia relapse that I successfully postponed.

Lyme, too

Back to my ankles…I’m also considering the possibility that the ankle problem is the beginning of the next Lyme season. So I’ll be coiling for Lyme tomorrow and seeing if that has any effect.

I’ve continued the aggressive approach to Bartonella, with three coiling sessions daily.

But I have a suspicion that what I really need to do is figure out if any other infections are active at this point and maybe start coiling for them to get my symptoms, mostly fatigue, headaches and joint pain, under control.

Disclaimer

• Circular Reasoning
• Spot Coiling

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

Tags: babesia, food allergies, intestinal microbiota, lyme

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