I spent the last week or two worrying. First, I was worried that I wasn’t getting all the Bartonella symptoms I’d been expecting. I started to wonder if my new protocol wasn’t working. Then I had a crazy pain in my chest that wouldn’t go away. It was different from my usual chest pain. I went to see a cardiologist because I was so worried. Finally, there was the usual […]
Coiling progress is such a strange concept. The better I do at it, the worse I feel. Until I feel better and make it worse all over again. I can’t quite believe that I’ve left behind my winter honeymoon. I feel worse. In some ways, it’s as simple as that. In other ways, it is the returning nightmare that makes me wonder if I’ll ever get to the end. I’ve […]
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 […]
A few weeks ago, I watched the movie Dallas Buyers Club. It was so helpful to see another person at another time with another disease trying to figure out how to keep going when mainstream medicine didn’t have good answers. The movie was about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. The main character was not intended to be an angel, but a guy who had both likeable and upsetting character […]
Forty years old. It’s an accomplishment. When I was in my 20s, 40 seemed old. In my 30s, my outlook started to change. For a few years in my early 30s, I wasn’t sure if I’d live to see 40. A review of my thirties might explain why I feel more triumphant about surviving than disappointed at what I haven’t accomplished yet (which some of my friends have expressed as […]
As I prepare for what I hope will be the final show-down against Bartonella, I’ve actually stopped coiling for a bit. Or rather, I stopped to travel at the end of December, and since returning home, I haven’t started again yet. I think about Bartonella a lot. I think about how long I’ve likely had it. I think about the symptoms over the years. I think about which antibiotics had […]
Kidneys As I reported last time, it took four years of coiling to discover my right kidney. You may laugh. It was there all along. I never, ever thought about it as a place to coil. My kidneys are where the toxins go out. I tried to be nice to them, to drink lots of water, sometimes with fresh lemon juice, to take supplements that tonify them as well as […]
It’s been a few weeks since my last update, and I’ve been trying to concentrate enough to write for over 10 days. My herxes have changed a little because of how often I’m coiling and for which infections. I have more brain fog than I’ve had in a while, and a different kind of tiredness. I can go out and do things, but my mind feels unfocused. I don’t need […]
I’ve spent a lot of the past five weeks in bed or, more precisely, lying down in various places around the house. I was too sick with bronchitis to coil for the tick-borne infections, which meant I had a lot more time on my hands then I’m used to. I did my best to entertain myself watching episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and reading Conn Iggulden’s Conqueror series […]
It’s been a whole month since I’ve been at the computer and able to write. Sometimes I wonder how I blogged the first year that I was coiling. I was definitely as tired as I have been this month. I was certainly sicker. I was also alone way more of the time. My only responsibilities were to take care of my cats. Back then I ordered out food or my […]
Coiling for Lyme 