 | Health Update As some of you may or may not know, I started having some health problems two or more years ago. {would be now over 3 or more years} I have never been extremely healthy having some odd things come up over my life (sinus problems, breast lump scare, gallbadder surgery, seizure activity), but nothing could prepare me for the worst scare of my life. I had something that no one could or would diagnose. I jumped from doctor to doctor having many tests and many wrong diagnosis. MS, Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and it's all in your head was just a few of them. It was time to take matters into our own hands and we saw a doctor who specialized in very weird things. He diagnosed people who couldn't get diagnosis.
If we couldn't get answers from him, I knew that they would find out the answer after an autopsy. I felt close to death and I hid it from most of the people I loved. I couldn't hide the pain or the twitches or the multitude of other problems, but I could hide that I felt I would be better off dead because at least they would give my husband some answers to what has been wrong.
Fast forward to March of this year, I saw the doctor and he gave me a diagnosis. A tiny tick had given me this disease and this disease may not be cured, but I could get better and possibly go into remission for life. There was no telling how long I had had it. A young child? Caused my seizures? Sinus issues? Middle school? Sheer and utter depression? High School senior? problems that started in college that had no answers. A few years after marriage? The breast lump and gall bladder problem. After the surgery? There was no way to know for sure, but what we did know was that there was treatment. I started all the treatment. Three antibiotics for like 8 weeks straight. YUCK. Nasty. I was nauseated all the time and throwing up for half of that time. I felt like I was in early stages of pregnancy, but if I was pregnant someone was gonna get sued. Like all the doctors who insisted that I must be pregnant so ran pregnancy tests on me. Obviously I wasn't pregnant or I would be fairly big by now (5 months or so).
Antibiotic regiment eased off and we tried different things. Some worked and others gave me horrible side effects or appeared to be highly allergic too (throat swelling, eye swelling, lots of red dots on my body, and vomiting). I also started weekly IV treatments for vitamins and minerals. These were things that the Lyme Disease bug robbed me of. I slowly started making them every two weeks instead. I started having some time off of meds. two days to start, then a week, now I'm up to two weeks off of antibiotics. I went back to the doctor on Saturday (yes Saturday, he opens once a month on a saturday).
He gave me some good news. I was improving, but I wasn't back to normal yet. I could have told him that. We are sticking with the "new" treatment plan. I will have 5 days of antibiotics with two days off. Then, I will do it again. After second week of antibiotics, I get two whole weeks off. I will go get IV's every three weeks instead of every two weeks and will add in a few vitamins to my daily regiment (Vitamin C, Chromium and another one that has to be specially ordered).
It's a very carefully planned regiment. Take vitamins two hours away from antibiotics. Take Antibiotics two hours from going to bed. Thank God my brain is almost back to normal or I'd have to have a spreadsheet like I did in the beginning checking off every thing I took.
The big thing that we're adding is some hormones. Now those of you that know me say, "Geesh aren't you hormonal enough already?" Apparently I have too much of one and too little of the other. So if they give me a supplement of the one I have too little of, the other one will go down? I'm not sure exactly how it all works but apparently it will help me sleep better and get rid of my nasty PMS symptoms. I have to take that 10 days out of my 28 day cycle. It has to be at bed time only.
I have a bunch of blood work to go endure the first week of September. Not fun, but it will give us some answers as to whether I really am getting better. I won't find out those answers until November. I hate the wait, but at least I'll get some answers with this doctor. The other doctors told me the results (always "negative") and didn't explain that even though it was in the normal range it was on the low or high end of normal and I could feel better if it were more in the middle range of normal and there was something that could be done to get it to the middle range of normal.
Hey you guys know I'm back to feeling better ... I've started writing my "novels" and run on sentences again. AND (this is for Mellissa A.) I've stopped running into walls. I guess I sometimes still do that, but I've not been tripping over the thin air.
I'm just glad to be on the road to recovery. I'm glad to have some answers and possibly have some problems fixed that I've had my whole life (PMS goodbye my dear friend). Thanks to my friends that have stuck with me through this journey. And those of you that met me while I was going through this health journey, you guys don't know the "real" me. I can't wait until we meet for real. |
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