About two weeks ago, I started coiling again. I have to say that I really liked taking a break while I’m at home. The days are so long. I can do lots of things. I feel freer. And mostly, I can imagine what it will be like when I no longer have to coil (or at least coil regularly).
There were some downsides. The last week in January, I could feel the seasonal Lyme flare starting. It was very mild compared to previous years. At the same time, the Bartonella symptoms were popping up, a little at a time, even with the Chinese herb formula. Some really strange symptoms popped up, things that used to happen to me, long ago, that made me think I was crazy and everyone else think I was a hypochondriac: an itchy rash on the tops of my feet when I got out of the shower (lasted about 40 minutes) and a spasm in a muscle on the front, right side of my neck that constricted my throat and made it hard to swallow. (Thank goodness my acupuncturist knew what to do!) I still have some nasal congestion and post-nasal drip from the respiratory infection I acquired in December.
All this is to say that my body still offered plenty of unpleasant distractions, but it was minor compared to the past eight years. And I wasn’t even coiling! Kind of nice.
I knew it was temporary and that I would have to go back to coiling before the infections got the better of me.
I started up again for real on January 26, with a Lyme coiling session. The next 4 days, I did a test run on Babesia to see if any of the Bartonella symptoms might in fact be from Bartonella. (A wonderful negative result on that test.) Then I began the Bartonella coiling in earnest. I have since been feeling worse. Much worse. This first week, the symptoms keep changing from day to day, but they are already slowing me down. I guess pain does that.
Lyme Flare
This year marks my fourth Lyme flare. The first two flares, in 2012 and 2013, were pretty bad. I felt like I got hit by a truck. They took several months of coiling to resolve. Last year and this year, they have been minor. (There was none in 2011 or before because the Lyme was already pretty active, so I didn’t really notice an increase in symptoms.)
This year the Lyme flare started with some joint popping, worst in my left jaw joint (TMJ), and pain in my ribs. I coiled right off the bat. It made the joint popping louder but less painful. I had some very sleepy days and nights.
It hit me a second time, with severe pain on the left side of my sacrum, in my left hip and down my left leg. It was a little scary because I had a hard time going up and down the stairs. However, the morning after the second coiling session, the whole episode was over. In terms of herxing, the second coiling session gave me pain down my paraspinal muscles and a case of Lyme-smelling urine. But the worse seems to be over. I’m trying to convince myself to coil every third day for the next several weeks, just to really be sure there aren’t any active Lyme bacteria floating around. Maybe I’ll do that, or maybe I’ll do it every fourth day. Either way, other than the TMJ which also gets triggered by the Bartonella infection, the Lyme symptoms are gone, so I feel relieved.
I don’t think I’ve posted the Lyme coiling protocol since I last modified it. Here it is.
Draft Lyme Coiling Protocol
432 Hz
Total of 110 minutes
- Head: each side, top, back – 5 minutes per
- Spine: upper, middle, lower – 5 minutes per
- Abdomen, Liver, Spleen (including left kidney) – 5 minutes per
- Chest, Right Kidney, Lower Abdomen (over pubic bone) – 3 minutes per
- Between Legs: thighs, knees, calves – 3 minutes per
- Feet through coil – 3 minutes
- Shoulder Knobs – 3 minutes
- Each side of Ribcage – 3 minutes
- Each Hip Bursa – 3 minutes
- Each Ilium Front, Each Ilium Back – 3 minutes per
- Each Butt Cheek (to get the Iliac Crest and the Femoral Head) – 3 minutes per
- Sitbones (or underside of buttocks, while lying on my stomach) – 3 minutes
Babesia Test Run
There were a few symptoms I was getting sporadically that I thought were too close to Babesia symptoms to take any chances. I learned my lesson in 2014: Babesia is my most disabling infection at this point. Better to lose a week of Bartonella coiling than to end up in bed for weeks at a time…again.
The symptoms I was concerned with were an occasional, light, night sweat. Usually, I woke up hot and barely damp, which seems like Bartonella, but can also happen at the beginning of a Babesia flare. I had some fleeting headaches, with some light sensitivity. They weren’t too intense, like Babesia, but again the headaches could be attributable to either infection. I also had a few days of getting really tired early in the afternoon. That is not quite like Babesia, but fatigue generates a big warning message in my mind.
So I coiled the full Babesia protocol, using both 570Hz and 753Hz three times a day, for 4 days. I figured two days wasn’t enough for me to be sure, especially if the load of protozoa was low. I was looking for more symptoms, the symptoms I’d been having to go away, or for the symptoms I was having to get worse.
Here’s what happened: I had one headache in the four days. Same intensity and duration as before. I had one sweat on the third day when I woke up in the morning. I was pretty overheated (so was my husband, incidentally, because the weather overnight had gotten warmer) and only a little damp. And I was tired for one afternoon.
Basically, coiling for Babesia had no effect on my symptoms. I consider this to be a negative test.
Just for the record, this is the protocol I used, which I changed a few days after I posted the last version of the protocol.
570Hz followed by 753Hz at each session
Morning (19 minutes total)
- each shoulder blade – 1 minute
- spine: upper, middle, lower – 1 minute each
- each ilium back/side – 1 minute
- each ilium back/central/upper buttock – 1 minute
- spleen – 5 minutes
- right kidney – 5 minutes
Afternoon (19 minutes total)
- between legs: thighs, knees, calves – 1 minute each
- feet through coil – 1 minute
- each ilium front – 1 minute
- each hip bursa – 1 minute
- lower abdomen/pubic bone – 1 minute
- heart/chest – 5 minutes
- abdomen – 5 minutes
Night (18 minutes total)
- head: each side, top, back – 1 minute each
- each shoulder knob – 1 minute
- each ribcage side/arm – 1 minute
- liver – 10 minutes
Bartonella Begins
Let’s just say I was procrastinating. I didn’t want to start coiling for Bartonella. I tried to convince myself that I could wait until I finished the Chinese herb formula that I was taking to prep my body for the herxes. I couldn’t hold out. My arms were getting tingly too often. My feet were starting to tingle in the morning. The headaches weren’t going away. I started to feel like my nerves were on edge or oversensitive and my hands and wrists began to hurt. I knew it was time to get started.
The first day of coiling was February 1, Superbowl Sunday. I never used to watch football. I didn’t even watch much of the game (just the last 4 minutes when my husband was getting riled up), but I stayed by the tv, knitting and watching the commercials. Before we started watching the game, I coiled the back of my head for 6 minutes, and my abdomen and chest for 5 minutes each. During the game, I cried during the Always commercial. I cried about it again after the game when we were talking about the commercial (and why I liked how it challenged sexism targeted at girls during a hypermasculine television program) and again when I looked at the longer version of the segment on YouTube. I then broke out in waterworks when I read the script for the domestic violence psa (even though I thought it was not the right message for this context, but I guess low expectations are appropriate when it comes to the NFL’s understanding of the issue).
I’m not against crying, per se, but my reaction to these videos was way over the top. It was the beginning of the Bartonella herx. It was completely emotional, no physical symptoms.
The next day, I coiled my entire body. That gave me pain in my sacrum the same day and kept me up at night from the pain. Since then I’ve been a little achy. I skipped a day to do Lyme. Then I coiled again. At this point it became clear that when I coil the right side of my head, it provokes a headache. I guess that’s where the Bartonella infection is active right now.
It seems like I’ve stirred things up. My ears hurt, my head aches, my jaw hurts on both sides–worse on the right, my shoulders ache, my back hurts, my feet hurt in the morning–worse and worse each day, my hands hurt during the day, and I’m tingly in all my limbs. It is definitely Bartonella time.
My temperature regulation has been off-line. I was cold for a few days. I went for a walk for 45 minutes and got myself hot. Then I stayed overheated for 36 hours. Now I’m cold again, especially in my hands and feet, and with a general feeling of being chilled.
I’m also having my own very strange Bartonella symptom. I want to put my arms over my head when I lie down. I just can’t stand having them by my sides. It’s crazy because my arms get cold at night if they aren’t under the covers. It also makes the tingling in my arms worse. I fight it, but I have to keep remembering to put my arms down.
I finished the Chinese herbs yesterday morning. By afternoon, I started having moderate kidney pain. I think the herbs have helped reduce the kidney pain and the constipation I usually get with Bartonella herxes. I expect things to get worse heading forward.
I don’t have my whole detox routine set up just yet. I’m still working it out. Of course, I’m more motivated when the symptoms get worse. So there is more to add than what I’m doing so far: chanca piedra pills, kombucha, lots of water.
Finally, the usual emotional stuff is starting to pick up. I feel more gloomy. Or rather, I feel more gloomy in between the moments when I’m happy with my life. Having my pain level go up makes it worse. Living in a beautiful place tempers the difficulties.
Bartonella is a funky infection to treat. I don’t like it at all. I’m holding on to the fact that I have been through this before and I’ve had significant improvements each time I’ve coiled for Bartonella aggressively and consistently.
The coiling plan, by the way, has shifted since this time last year. I’m doing the back of my head less, but still a lot. Somehow, I’m surprised when I look back and see that I coiled the back of my head for 8 minutes three times a day (24 minutes total, daily). That seems like quite a lot. It may be responsible for the dent I made in the neurological symptoms which haven’t gotten as bad as they used to be, even though I coiled very little for Bartonella all autumn, and I didn’t coil for Bartonella from December 15 to February 1. That’s the longest Bartonella coiling break since I started in 2011.
Anyway, the coiling protocol is in flux with daily modifications. I’m trying to respond to the more noticeable symptoms on my head, neck and shoulder area with extra coiling. This current draft is the most recent version and is subject to change in the very near future.
Bartonella Coiling Protocol
Draft 11
831 Hz (93 minutes total)
Morning (49 minutes total)
- back of head – 6 minutes
- abdomen – 5 minutes
- chest – 5 minutes
- liver – 5 minutes
- sacrum – 5 minutes
- each shoulder knob – 4 minutes
- head: each side, top -2 minutes per
- upper and middle spine – 2 minutes per
- each ilium front, each hip bursa, pubic bone – 1 minute per
Evening (44 minutes total)
- back of head – 6 minutes
- spleen/left kidney – 5 minutes
- right kidney – 5 minutes
- sacrum – 5 minutes
- each shoulder knob – 3 minutes
- head: each side, top – 2 minutes per
- between legs: thighs, knees, calves – 1 minute per
- feet through coil – 1 minute
- each side of rib cage – 1 minute
- each ilium back, each butt cheek, sitbones – 1 minute per
As usual, I’m tackling Bartonella with a mixture of trepidation and hopefulness. Mostly, at this point, I just want to find an ending. I want to go back to the six weeks of living with few symptoms (though none would be infinitely preferable). But as I remind myself each time I know things are going to get worse: the only way out is through. So bring on the healing. Bring on the Bartonella herx. Bring on the funk.
Categories: healing process, Herx reactions, using the coil machine
Tags: babesia, bartonella, lyme, symptoms, Traditional Chinese Medicine
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Coiling for Lyme 