As the holidays approach, I have the cultural angst that many Americans do, with the mixed memories of previous Christmases, both extremely joyful and extremely difficult. So I’m trying to excuse myself for the way all my feelings are being amplified by continuing to coil aggressively for Bartonella. It’s funny, but the more I coil, the more emotional I feel. I have moments of calm, but the stormy times are very stormy. It’s as if all the changes my body has been going through over the past years have hit a crescendo today. That sounds so dramatic, and I’ll probably decide by the end of the day that it was, in fact, drama. But I’m writing it this way because that’s the turmoil that Bartonella flares and herxes whip up.
Bartonella Progress
For a while, I felt like I was making such big progress on Bartonella, even if today is glum. In reality, I have. After coiling the back of my head for 10 minutes twice a day for a few days, the herx came on, but it was not as big as the herx from when I started coiling the back of my head for 10 minutes once a day. I had the usual stuff: one headache, some urinary hesitation and bladder pain, constipation, kidney pain, night sweats. Since I expected it, it wasn’t so bad.
I felt emboldened enough to add in a third coiling on the back of my head each day. Adding the third one didn’t initially increase the amount I herxed. I started doing it on December 10, the day after the last blog post. Now, I feel it more. The kidney pain is mild but persistent. There is a lot more tingling in my limbs, especially when I sit or lie on one position for a while (like sleeping). I’m constipated and have lower abdominal pain. I’ve been sleeping very lightly, but it isn’t quite insomnia. I have daily night sweats. Most of the other physical symptoms are gone. The psychological symptoms seem worse. I just feel on edge all the time. I think part of it got stirred up when my aunt died at the beginning of last month. But somehow, I seem to feel worse, more emotionally sore, as time goes by, rather than starting to perk up. I want to cry every day. I don’t feel like doing anything, but I force myself forward in slow-motion. My family is coming to visit in a few days and staying for the holidays. I’ll coil my head a little less during that time so I don’t drive myself (and them) crazy with all the emotional stuff.
In order to increase to coiling my head for 10 minutes three times a day, I had to cut out some of the coiling on my other body parts. (This is when I wish I had a machine that could irradiate my whole body at once instead of coiling my body in small segments.) The new protocol is listed below.
Bartonella Coiling Protocol
(Draft 9)
Frequency: 832 Hz
Morning (total 40 minutes)
- Each side of head, 5 minutes
- Back of head, 10 minutes
- Spine: upper, middle, 5 minutes per
- Spleen, 5 minutes
- Liver, 5 minutes
Midday (total 38 minutes)
- Back of head, 10 minutes
- Between legs: thighs, knees, calves, 2 minute each
- Feet through coil, 2 minutes
- Each ilium front, 2 minutes
- Each hip bursa, 2 minutes
- Each side of ribcage plus the adjacent arm, 2 minutes
- Each ilium back, 2 minutes
- Each butt cheek (up towards the iliac crest, for the joint and muscles), 2 minutes
Night (total 36 minutes)
- Top of head, 8 minutes
- Back of head, 10 minutes
- Sacrum, 8 minutes
- Chest including heart, 5 minutes
- Abdomen, 5 minutes
Even though I’m complaining and irritable, I have some moments when I can tell I’ve reached the amount of coiling I’ll need to do to finally crack Bartonella. It’s been going on forever. Bartonella was hard from the beginning because of the herxes, specifically the headaches, insomnia, kidney pain and constipation. The worst part seems to be over. What I’m left with is getting to the deepest, most persistent part of the infection in my brain. So it isn’t fun, but it no longer seems that I’ll never finish.
Eat Your Wheaties!
To add to my physical discomfort and general sense of malaise, I’m continuing to include wheat and other inflammatory foods in my diet. I definitely have a strong response in my ribcage. It starts hurting about an hour after I eat a wheat-based product. But the reaction is no longer global. I coil for Lyme and the rib pain goes away until I eat wheat again. It lessens overnight, as well, otherwise I’d have to coil for Lyme every day. Instead, I’m only coiling every 4-5 days, waiting until I have additional symptoms, like joint pain or a funny feeling in my head. The only persistent symptom is moderate pain in my sacrum. The Lyme herxes are diminishing for now, which is I guess what I expected.
The only time that didn’t happen recently (low body response, diminishing herxes) is when I had a vegetarian lasagna at a restaurant. I made a whole big song and dance about an egg allergy. The waitress went into the kitchen and assured me that no eggs were used in the lasagna, including the noodles. As I took my last bite, I noticed a creamy pesto. I knew there was pesto in it, but the creamy part had escaped my notice.
Anyway, within an hour or so, I was having really bad pain in my hip joints, my sacrum and down the nerve bundles in my legs. My head felt funny until a bad headache developed. I’m not sure if there was egg in the dish, I never asked. But I took it in stride. I felt pretty wasted, but I coiled for Lyme the next day and all the symptoms abated…followed by a profound fatigue. So I think there is more to do to keep triggering the Lyme, though I won’t add any new stressors or triggers until after the holidays.
Vitex Repercussions
My period is officially late this month. I’ve been looking over my menstrual chart, which is filled with missing data this month. I just haven’t been in the mood to pay attention to it. I thought that I ovulated around day 14, based on temperature readings. But the temperature readings have been up and down since then, which I’ve noticed in the past can be affected by increasing Bartonella coiling times. That puts the ovulation date in doubt. My breasts didn’t start to hurt until day 21 (December 3). At that point, I stopped taking Vitex, the progesterone up-regulator that I’ve been on since May, because it was no longer working, and I kept gaining weight on it.
Fast forward to December 14, day 32 of my cycle, and the breast pain is gone. Now I’m starting to get mild cramps in my lower abdomen. Okay, this would have been a good day to start my next cycle, but my period didn’t come. That was on Saturday. It is now Tuesday (day 35) and I still have some mild, intermittent cramping, but my period still hasn’t come.
I expected some problems this month as a result of stopping Vitex mid-cycle. The delayed onset of my new cycle may be it. There is another possibility, which is that the Vitex had already stopped working at the beginning of my cycle, so my suspected ovulation date was wrong, and I didn’t ovulate until day 21, when the breast soreness started. In that case, my period is due sometime between now and Friday.
I can’t do anything but wait. In the meantime, I’ve been feeling so hormonal on top of all the Bartonella-induced drama. Thus I am frustrated. I hate waiting. I want my body to finally start functioning properly.
One additional note on Vitex. I weighed myself this morning. I’ve dropped two pounds since stopping the Vitex. I suspect I will see slow but steady weight loss over the next several months, as my body adjusts to not having too much progesterone in my system.
Categories: healing process, Herx reactions, using the coil machine
Tags: bartonella, hormones, lyme, menstruation
2 replies ›
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Coiling for Lyme 
Do you think the additional emotional symptoms may be another bug coming to the fore as the bartonella dies down?
Hi Craig,
That’s a great question. I have a sense that there is another infection lurking, and I’m not sure which one it is. It hadn’t occurred to me that the next infection I have to deal with might be contributing to the emotional turmoil. For now, I think it is the hormonal problems because the emotional turmoil substantially subsided once my menstrual cycle started…however, the next infection might flare right before my cycle starts. I guess I’ll find out as I keep coiling.
Thanks for posting a comment.
All the best,
Rose