The night before last, I took the last dose (#28) of my second package of the Alfons Ven CHIM remedy. Yet again, I feel like this treatment is a wild ride. I’ve had a few really good days, several days where my mind was clear but my body hurt, and some bad days.
The question I keep asking myself (and my husband and my acupuncturist) is: am I getting better? The short answer is that it’s hard to tell. Things are definitely moving. I don’t feel as bad as I did after the first package. In fact, my symptoms have shifted around a lot. I have fewer periods of brain fog, more energy, more pain, and loose stools. In comparison, towards the end of the last package, I had lots of brain fog, less energy, less pain, and constipation.
What gives?
I suspect that the brain fog in the first package and the middle of the second package was from a Bartonella die off. Many of my symptoms were consistent with Bartonella herxes. There were other symptoms, including kidney pain, cardiac pain, acne, constipation, extreme fatigue, etc., to go with the brain fog. They haven’t all completely cleared up, but they are not dominant right now. This time around, the symptoms include: spine pain (esp. my sacrum), muscle spasms, headaches, irritated bowels, night sweats, and joint pain. If anything, the symptoms have moved away from the core of my body towards the periphery.
Two Week Update
After my last blog post, I went down to two doses of FLUOX daily. I realized that maybe 3 doses daily was too much, pulling excess toxins out of storage in my tissues and increasing the load my body has to process while herxing. Once I went down to two doses a day, I found that I didn’t crave it anymore. The 2 doses were adequate to get rid of most of my herx symptoms by the following night.
In the past two weeks since my last update, starting with day 16 of the second package, I had several days of bronchial irritation. (Do I call it bronchitis if there was no infection?) I was exhausted and in bed at least a few hours each day for 4 days. During that time, I started getting night sweats. They started out moderate, waking up damp or even wet. Then by day 21, I had to change my clothes every night because I woke up drenched. That lasted for three nights. Also on day 21, I began to have loose, unformed stools. That continued for 7 days. During that time, as long as I slept at night, I had very productive days, going for walks and working on my computer. I had intermittent insomnia. Days 21-23, I had arthritic pain in my hands, most strongly, and in my other joints as well. Around day 24, I started having headaches. They’ve continued every day since then: sometimes the top of my head, sometimes the back, sometimes the right side, other times the left. The pain is associated with tension in my neck and shoulders as well as light sensitivity (with bright light triggering or increasing the pain). I spent day 25 in bed. The night sweats started again on day 26, supersoakers, for three nights. Days 27 & 28, I was up and around, with a headache part of the day and increased pain in my left heel, which had never gone away, though was less of a bother for many days.
The day after dose 28, I had such a bad headache that I couldn’t focus on anything: no reading, no watching tv, no radio, no writing. I tried napping. I tried crocheting. But mostly I sat still or lay down. When I finally convinced myself to go for a walk (might as well because my head was going to hurt either way) my husband came home and gave me a head and neck massage. The muscles were hard like rocks. Between his hands and a dose of advil, the headache reduced itself to a mild annoyance.
Speaking of annoyance, I found myself very easily annoyed for the past 10 days. I wonder if this is the toxins in my brain causing emotional disturbance rather than brain fog. Also since the last dose, I’ve had bronchial inflammation again (2 days so far).
Today I went for acupuncture to help clear away the toxins (or in TCM terms, to release stagnation) that build up during herxes. I felt great afterwards, no pain anywhere…until I left the building. As I was getting out my sunglasses, the sunlight triggered yet another headache. AAARGH! This is a very troubling symptom.
I’m taking a five day break between the end of package 2 of CHIM and the beginning of package 3. During this time, I’m taking 3 doses of FLUOX daily. I’m also drinking a dose of the dissolved zeolite, ORËÁ, to help flush out toxins.
Assessing CHIM
I’m glad I purchased all six months of the Alfons Ven remedy that I plan to take. It would have been difficult to decide, based on my symptoms and how I feel, whether to continue to take it. Having decided in advance, part way through the first package, that the remedy is doing something, I’m glad to have it on hand. In many ways, this feels like an experiment. I don’t know how it will end, but there is an endpoint, after which I will be at another crossroads.
In one way, the Alfons Ven remedy, CHIM, reminds me of antibiotics: I can’t control the intensity or duration of the herx symptoms. It is a confusing picture because I don’t know which of the infections are being targeted, as I did with the coil machine. I just know that something is happening because the die off symptoms are familiar. I guess I’m used to having more control. With this remedy, I have to trust that my body will know what to do next to eradicate the infections.
Reaching out
I had an encouraging conversation with someone who is three months ahead of me in taking the Alfons Ven remedy. Echoing what another person told me, he said that the fourth month was the worst. It seemed like everything in his body and mind was going haywire. Then a few days into the fifth package, he has enough energy that he started going to the gym. His experience makes me more hopeful.
The other thing I’ve learned is that it matters that he and I have been coiling and detoxing for a long time. Another woman I spoke to has more active infection (and has done less treatment, and is more symptomatic) and can’t handle taking the remedy daily. She needs time in between doses to let her body recover from the herxes. Each person who takes this has a different reaction, depending on where they are in their journey.
We’ll see how I’m doing in another two weeks, after I’m part way through the third package.
Categories: Alfons Ven Lyme Package, healing process, Herx reactions
1 reply ›
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Coiling for Lyme 
Dear Rose, thank you very much for your update and all the best!