Monamorphosis: DAILY INSPIRATION

Thursday, December 20, 2012

DAILY INSPIRATION

I know many of you are still struggling with Lyme Disease (or for those of you that are not dealing with Lyme Disease, perhaps something else). One of my dear friends who started this journey with me at the same time (we 'met' through an online support group and became dear friends through our struggles) still struggles with Lyme Disease. My heart breaks when I hear that she is still not doing well and unable to feel like herself in most ways.

Having been blessed with recovery, and a normal life again, I feel it is my duty to share what I did to get better with others. At the very least, I should provide inspiration to those who are still struggling. When I was undiagnosed, sick for years, and then sick through treatment for years after that, I looked everywhere for HOPE from someone who had recovered from Lyme. I could not find but one. This, of course, contributed to hopelessness.

I am here to tell you that you CAN and WILL get better. I never DREAMED I would be doing what I am today. I have started working on my small booklets (the most important of which I believe will be an outline of everything I did to get better) to share with this community. I promise to work on them more in the New Year (but work and life are quite busy), but please feel free to bug me via email to encourage me to finish them. I know not everyone will get better the way I did, but I have a lot of information to share that I believe can at least help.

For now, I will provide you with some hope. When everyone else is celebrating the holidays and you feel blue (I remember this very well from years past), please remember that ANYTHING is possible. Miracles do happen. My first LLMD told me I would never get better (I quickly changed doctors). I proved him wrong. HOPE can never be taken away. If you want some inspiration from days when I was in IV treatment for Lyme and could see through the light, see this post. To that vein, here are a few inspirational quotes:

"When you have come to the edge of all the light you have
And step into the darkness of the unknown
Believe that one of the two will happen to you
Either you'll find something solid to stand on
Or you'll be taught how to fly!"

~Richard Bach, best-selling author.

"Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it." ~Winston Churchill, was a British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War.

"Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them." ~Washington Irving, was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century.

Also, for those of you really feeling you need to try something new - 2 women on the CA Lyme group who did not get better through traditional LLMDs or other complicated holistic treatment posted that they BOTH became symptom-free and healthy through an Ayurvedic doctor from India (I am not promoting this doctor nor do I get any sort of incentive for promoting him). He is visiting the U.S. in 2013. I also saw a doctor in NYC for many months (and still work with remotely) that helped me get to where I am today. I am happy to provide either doctor name to you in a private email.

With warm wishes for health, happiness, and peace...Mona

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DEFINITIONS

Late-Stage Lyme Disease: An infectious bacterial tick borne disease that is transmitted through the bite of a tick, though many doctors believe it may now be transmitted through some infected fleas and mosquitoes. When first bitten, if a person develops a bulls-eye rash and is aware that they have been infected, the disease is easily treated with antibiotics. However, only 40-60% of patients develop the classic bulls-eye rash, called Erythema Migrans. Additionally, the rash is often invisible in people with darker skin, like me. When the tick bite is missed and a person goes months or even years without knowing that they have been infected, the disease enters its late disseminated stages, infecting many if not all systems of the body – limbic, neurological, physical, nervous, psychiatric, cardiac, and the list goes on. At this point, it is excruciatingly difficult, painful, and expensive to treat (note most Lyme treatment is not covered by insurance and highly controversial). Years of antimicrobials and complicated treatment plans (including many holistic methods of healing) are necessary to heal a late stage Lyme patient.

Herxheimer reaction ("Herx"): definition should be "torture." Can be used as a noun or verb as in "I herxed so bad I felt like I was run over by a truck and then dragged by a pack of wolves through hot dry sand." Scientifically speaking, a herxheimer reaction is what occurs during the treatment of Lyme disease and its co-infections. The common misconception is that when a patient is treated with meds, it should be all uphill from there. Medication should make you feel better, right? Very wrong. When spirochetal bacteria (like Lyme) is killed off, it releases a massive load of toxins in the body. These toxins are "neurotoxins" and "endotoxins", which putting it simply means that it is a toxin to the brain and the patients' organs. Typically the death of these bacteria and the associated release of endotoxins occurs faster than the body can remove the toxins via the natural detoxification process (hence the need for tons of detox supplements, herbs, and strict diet). Herxing can cause a whole host of symptoms, ranging from seizures, migraines, excruciating pain, dizziness, relentless hours of crying, anxiety, heart rate issues, pain, inability to breathe, insomnia, episodes of rage, confusion, memory loss, and much, much more. This, therefore makes Lyme treatment grueling, and very similar to cancer treatment with chemotherapy.

Co-infection: another Lyme-like infection transmitted by the tick that is tantamount to having another Lyme Disease, often with worse presenting symptoms for certain patients (like me). Because the late-stage Lyme patient (almost all of us have co-infections) has been so ill for years, the immune system is more compromised and unable to handle all three diseases (though they are all blanketed under one disease, Lyme). Treatment is also very complicated because the doctor has to be sure to address each co-infection and Lyme and do so in a very delicate balance so as not to Herx the crap out of the patient and on the flipside, to make sure Lyme or co-infection are treated aggressively enough so as not to experience a relapse or flare of symptoms. I have experienced both of these unpleasantries and let me just tell you, they are frickin' miserable.

Babesia: a co-infection of Lyme. Babesia is my worst co-infection, hardest to eradicate in the co-infection world (IMO), causing horrible vertigo, dizziness, crippling depression, sweats, nightmares, fevers, fatigue, air hunger (inability to breathe; that’s why I have an oxygen tank and take beta-blockers), heart palpitations/chest pain that make you think you're having a heart attack, severe cognitive impairments, and neurological difficulties.

Bartonella: another co-infection characterized by migraines, confusion, joint and muscle pain, spaciness, feeling disconnected from your body, cognitive impairments, bone-breaking chills, numbness and tingling in extremities, fatigue, depression, extreme agitation and anxiety. Note that all these symptoms overlap to some degree with each co-infection and with Lyme so it’s often difficult to determine what is the cause of what symptom and sometimes many infections are the culprit. My first 3 months of Bartonella treatment, I became so confused the first 2 weeks that I got LOST in a grocery store (no joke), and put the scissors in the freezer by accident. I also called people and forgot I was calling them and walked away from my dialing phone several times to come back and find someone talking. Truth is stranger than fiction.

LLMD: a Lyme-literate medical doctor. Lyme patients love them. We Lyme patients are very educated about our disease - we have to be; so few doctors know about the severity of late-stage Lyme, most have no idea what a ‘co-infection’ is when I tell them, and most don’t know how to diagnose or treat it. I had a doctor ask me if Lyme was hereditary!!!! wtf? There are so few LLMDs for the huge number of us and on average, most late-stage Lyme patients see 9-15 doctors (over a period of years) before they get properly diagnosed. Seeing a regular infectious disease doc would be suicide - he/she would put you on 28 days of drugs and if you were sick after that, tell you that you have chronic fatigue or what IDSA docs notoriously refer to as "post-Lyme fatigue." Ha! I was on an 8 month-wait list for my last LLMD, and flew to DC every 3 weeks to see him - one of the best LLMDs on the East Coast. Not to mention he costs a small fortune because no LLMDs can take insurance. This disease is a huge political controversy and I explain in detail in one of my posts, entitled: "The Great Lyme Controversy." The controversy is so great, in fact, that the Connecticut Attorney General brought an antitrust investigation against the IDSA (the enemy who writes insurance guidelines for treating Lyme and works with the CDC). The investigation “uncovered serious flaws in the IDSA’s process for writing its 2006 Lyme disease guidelines….The IDSA guidelines have sweeping and significant impacts on Lyme disease medical care. They are commonly applied by insurance companies in restricting coverage for long-term antibiotic treatment or other medical care and also strongly influence physician treatment decisions. Insurance companies have denied coverage for long-term antibiotic treatment relying on these guidelines as justification….My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by several of the most powerful IDSA panelists. The IDSA's guideline panel improperly ignored or minimized consideration of alternative medical opinion and evidence regarding chronic Lyme disease, potentially raising serious questions about whether the recommendations reflected all relevant science.” See http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?a=2795&q=414284.

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Thursday, December 20, 2012

DAILY INSPIRATION

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All About Late-Stage Lyme: the Disease, the heated Controversy, and the Repeated Misdiagnoses

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