Channeling my Inner Cowgirl

On Monday, we have a theme for dressing up. Sometimes we're asked to wear a specific color or wear clothes of our favorite teams, but on Monday we have something that I was either going to be silly about or not participate in. However, we found out that our big Vice President was coming to the school so we are all required to dress in Western Wear ~ aka come in wearing Cow Girl Clothes.

Well, I'm not one to do things 1/2 way. So we went to Good Will and found this awesome hideous shirt & vest. Then they had a pretty awesome hideous belt and shoes. In all, it was about 13 dollars for a pretty good cow girl outfit. Well, we decided to hit up Wally World to see if we could find a pretty decent cow girl hat and bandanna. Well, we did and when I got home I found my best pair of jeans country western pants. I put it all together and channeled my inner cowgirl. :) All in all, it cost 24 dollars to channel my inner country western look. How did I do?

Beauty from the Ashes

Today my hubby took some photos of me that I will share later, but when going through them I found something that I had not looked at before. The morning of my Grandfather's funeral I took my time and put on my duds. My husband put on his duds and I thought that even though it was a painful day for my heart that we should take a photo together because honestly I have rarely felt more beautiful than I did on that day. I knew that my Grandfather would think that I was such a beauty and though it was hard ... we set up the camera and took a photo. I haven't had the heart to go through those photos and forgot they were there. When I was scanning through the photos we took today, I found them.

If you look close at my waist, you'll see that my husband held me up that day. He did so every day from the moment we knew it was close and held me up the day of the funeral. I just wanted to share.

Wow

So last night, I went out on a limb and took my 8th in a row dose of LDN. I decided to go out on a further limb and take a 1mg instead of .5mg. Oh wowzer, I remember what LDN *really* does to me! I dreamt all night long, but at least they were good dreams last night. They were wedding dreams, but really bizarre wedding dreams.

I dreamt that my bouquet showed up and was as long as I am tall. So I tore a bit away to make it better. Then it kept growing in my hands as I was walking down the aisle. For some reason, my folks were there, but my Dad didn't walk me down the aisle. This person I haven't seen in over a decade did and when we got to the end of the aisle, this person kidnapped me from my own wedding. But he just took me to another location saying that it would be prettier than where we had chosen. We met up with my husband there and the bouquet continued to grow while I continued to tear pieces away from it.

Then we were running and got onto these huge pieces of equipment. The further we got to the bottom ofthe equipment, the bigger they got so that we couldn't actually get off the equipment even though we tried! It was crazy! Then some of my college friends joined us on this ride along with elementary school friends I haven't seen in over 20 years! The equipment started making this really loud noise when I realized my alarm was going off.

Crazy LDN dreams! They are really vivid

Six (er make that 7 )Days of LDN

I'm almost at the 7 days in a row of 1/2 cap of LDN! I was supposed to do 5 days in a row, but last night I still was feeling okay symptom wise so I decided to go ahead and do the 6th day. I typically do 2 or 3 rounds before moving on, but if I do well with the 6 days after skipping tonight I'll go ahead and move onto the 7 days in a row which means in the next week or two I'll be taking my first full 1mg dose since the headache debacle.

If I didn't have a small headache and I wasn't getting home late tonight (late for me is anytime after 8 and I'll be getting home around 9), I would go ahead and dose LDN tonight. If I'm home by 8:45, I may just do that.

I can't believe it's taken so long to get to where I could take 1mg, but it's the tortoise that wins the race.

** edited **

I did take my LDN last night! So I made it to seven days in a row! Yippee.

RAW(e) 2(6)

This week's RAW(e) contest over at Sailor's & Co is all about the number 26.

Go to your 2nd photo folder and pick the 6th photo there.



Check out Sailor & Company's for more Raw (e) (unedited) pictures.

Hello Strangers

Six full days since my last post. What have I been doing? There is nothing much to report. My hubby began a 42 day crazy diet (from here on out referred to as CD) given to him by my crazy doctor. I hope it works. He's only the 13th patient to start this CD with my doctor, but he's seen it work and knows that we will try the extreme to help Lyme so why not give this a try. I don't want to get into the specifics of the medical aspect of this CD because I don't want anyone to give it a try on their own.

But in addition to some specific medications that were prescribed by my crazy doctor, my husband is going to be having 2 days of crazy fat foods. He's to eat burgers, cheeses, carbs, ice cream, and whatever else he desires that has high fat content. THEN, for 40 days he can only consume 500 calories a day along with these prescribed things that I don't want to get into. It surely will be interesting. My doc's first patient is someone that works in his office. He's completed the 42 day CD and he's been in the maintenance phase for a while too and he's still within 2 pounds of the last day of his diet.

Anyways, we're kind of excited about it. (He's very excited about it, but I'm a little worried. Probably because I wasn't actually at the appointment to hear all about it from the medical doctor). So wish us luck. Him for committing to it and me for ... having to deal with him committing to it. ;)

My cold is *almost* finished. The only thing that's still bothering me is the cough. So I still say Yeah for IV Vitamin C! I was supposed to get blood work next week, but have postponed it one full week due to circumstances out of my control. One thing they are testing for is Iron and well .. as all you ladies know .. there is something that happens once a month that depletes a bit of Iron so I want to get that all out of the way before they test my Iron. The other thing was that my boss forgot I needed the morning off and scheduled me to work. So instead of having her to rearrange the work schedule, I just rearranged my blood work. It was so much easier and they had availability so that made me happy on both ends.

This coming up week has the potential to break my immune system. Two afterwork events. One is CPR training (which means I'll be in a small room with a lot of people; more than likely other people that I'm not around all day either which increases my chance to get sick). So to help me with this potential illness catcher, I'll probably do one week of magical drops to help. I'm not sure if it will or not, but I'd rather do something and try to prevent it than to have to get another IV after I've caught it.

Alright have a good week. You may or may not hear from me again with the exception of the RAW(e) post should I have a photo to post.

RAW(e) Mirrors

What is a mirror? To me, a mirror is something that shows a reflection. When I saw this week's RAW(e) challenge was mirrors, I knew exactly what I wanted to share. I knew I could dig out the camera and create a new image, but this one is stuck in my head. So here ya go.



What is a RAW(e) challenge? Well to find out more: Check out Sailor & Company's blogspot.

Link up one of your own untouched photos to her page. :)

SYTYCD

I didn't feel up to writing a review on the last two weeks of SYTYCD. I will probably write up a little something this weekend on my favorite performances over the last two episodes. I will say that I am so upset for both Alex & Ashley. They were most always in my top three dancers so it's so sad that both were injured and couldn't return. I'm excited though that there is a possibility that Alex will come back next season.

Feeling better

Woke up this morning feeling a bit better. Woke up for the first time in days without actually feeling like I have a fever and while I haven't checked it, I'm going to assume that I don't have one. The massive amount of swelling in my nose along with any mucous to go along with it is non-existent meaning I can actually breathe in and out. Speaking of breathing, it doesn't hurt my back to breathe this morning either. This was the most worrysome part of yesterday. It hurt so bad to breathe that I was holding my breath most of the day. I am still coughing, but coughing for me lasts a long time after all other symptoms are gone. I do have a sore throat this morning, but again this is something that typically comes on at the first and end of the stage. Also my cough doesn't like like a dying seal this morning.

So between DayQuil, Magic Drops and the IV intervention, I am feeling so much better. I won't be able to take the DayQuil except at night because I'm an oddball and it actually makes me go to sleep. So I'm praying that it all stays away. I can deal with the cough, but what's a tad bit annoying is the way cough drops leave your mouth. Ya know the rough dry bumpy feeling I'm talking about? Just wanted to leave a cold update.

And I think I have a new nickname for the lady that inserts my IV's. Slick the one stick. Since March, she's had to do something with my veins 5 times. She did all 5 things (4 IV's and a blood draw) with only one stick a piece. Only one of those 5 times actually hurt throughout the IV and that was only a 30 minute IV and once it was out the pain was gone. In the last 4 weeks, I've had 5 IV's. Four have been done by "Slick" and one by S (guess she needs a name too eh?) "Schtick." In all honestly Shtick didn't do too bad. She got it in one stick and the IV stayed open the entire 30 minutes, but because it was in my hand ... it was painful. VERY painful. It bruised pretty bad, but because of her tip about the Neosporin (who knew that Neosporin could help bruises?) the bruising went down a lot quicker than normal. In fact a few days later and it was practically non-existant.

Unless there is an emergency of some sort, that should be my last needle until the 28th or so. That's when I get my lab work to see how my Iron is doing. It will be interesting to see how my other labs are since I've just had something that would probably play with my White Blood Cells. I just have to remember that 2 weeks prior to the labs I was sick so that if numbers look funny there, there is a good reason.

Miracle

So they were able to squeeze me in today. That's miracle number 1.

They were able to get my vein on the first try. That's miracle number 2. In the last month, every single IV was gotten in the first stick. So 5 IV's .. only 5 sticks. Pure Miracle (Or Skill .. probably a bit of both).

I have a fever today. In fact, it was even there at the doctor's office. I'm a weirdo. I'll have a fever of 103 at home and when I get to the doctor's office, it will be 98.6. Always causes me to roll my eyes. Anyways, today I had a low grade of 99.9 at home. When I got there, it had actually risen a whole degree. That never happens.

I got a treatment and I'm hoping that with some oral Vitamin C and magic drops that I will be feeling better in a few days. I am very grateful to some special people at the office. They truly don't know how much they have helped me over the last 3 plus years.

Hates being right ALL the time

I knew if I didn't get the treatment yesterday that I would be feeling 1,000 times worse today. Woke up at 2am aching in my back, it hurt to breathe and I was coughing like a seal and .. to top it off this morning I woke with a fever! Lovely.

Maybe they can squeeze me in today to attempt IV placement.

Ears Nose Throat

My Ears are popping. My Nose is dripping. My throat is scratchy. Add those things together and you have a pretty miserable Jennifer.

Between yesterday and today, I have had more water pass my lips than I usually do in about seven days. Yesterday was absolutely ridiculous. Not only was I having to drink the water for the IV, but I was actually thirsty. So I was drinking the bottles down as if I hadn't had any water in weeks. I thought it was bad yesterday until I woke today. I drank TWICE as much today as I did yesterday. What does this mean? I spent most of my day on the toilet. *sigh*

I thought I might be able to get another IV today, but that kind of fell through so I'll probably be drinking the same amount of water again tomorrow just in case. I know how it feels a day or two before Bronchitis sets in and that's how I am feeling today. I go from a small cold to Bronchitis pretty quickly so the quicker I can get help the quicker I'll feel better. I could wait until next week IF it turned into Bronchitis, but why wait when I can do something to prevent it from turning to Bronchitis this week. So I keep myself extra hydrated just in case I can be squeezed in for an IV.

Anyways as I told someone else, "I feel awful." It's so weird to feel awful and it not be a Lyme Disease awful. It's a normal reason to feel bad. I have a cold. Now because I do have Lyme I am more susceptible for the cold to turn into something nasty. So I'm just trying to stop it before the simple common cold turns into the nasty Bronchitis or Pneumonia. Right now, I'm drinking plenty of fluids (what an understatement) and getting plenty of rest.

4 IV's and 4 sticks

I'm starting to look like a liar at the doctor's office. Four IV's and one stick each IV. For those that are keeping track, I was supposed to go tomorrow to get my last IV Iron. Well I started feeling unwell yesterday so I decided to pop in today to see if they could go ahead and get my IV in today. I thought maybe I might feel too ill tomorrow to go. I may wind up going back for another IV this week, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Today. There was no pain. There was a tiny pinch when the lady was trying to thread the IV, but essentially today was painless. I also got to meet a blog reader today! It was so nice to meet you Alexa! :o)

RAW(e) Desserts

As soon as I saw the contest was on RAW(e) photographs of desserts, I knew which folder to look in. This little dessert was at the Cheesecake Factory.



Go here to check out this week's contest by
Sailor & Company's photo contest

East Meets West

In just a little while, I'm heading out to meet a West Coast Lymie.

Yuins think I should use my heavy accent? Haa. Once I talked on the phone with someone for 30 whole minutes using my deepest southern accent. I had to give up on it though because it's very difficult to sustain such deep accent when it's not your normal speaking voice.

Wish me & Alphie luck.

** Update **

I made it there with no problems and navigated us to restaurant and back with little issues. :o)

Funny story though. There was this "Phone Booth" outside the hotel with what appeared to be a person in it. However, the person didn't even seem to be talking on the phone. I thought and said how odd it was that the person would just be standing there. I asked my friend to look to see if he was actually on the phone to which she responded, "I think it's a mannequin." Haa haa.


My friend and I had a great conversation and managed to take up the booth of the restaurant for quite a bit of time. We were quite silly in our ways and it was as if two old friends were having fun for the 50th time instead of just the first. I hope they make it back this way sometime soon. I don't feel comfortable posting her picture unless she approves it so here is a photo to tide you over from the restaurant.

4 days of LDN

They went .. dare I say it .. well. I had a few symptoms, but overall the last 4 days have been very good. I even woke up this morning, not fatigued. That hasn't happened in a long time.

:)

Comments

I've done this a few other times, but I have come to the decision to moderate ALL comments on the blog. I had the setting for only moderating comments for posts older than 1 day, but with the 10 comments I received this morning I made the decision to moderate all of the comments. Fortunately, no one else has seen some of the nasty comments I've received, but I would like to keep it that way. So with that said, I have also disabled anonymous comments too. Since those are the ones that leave the nasty comments anyways.

Praying for Bennett

I read a lot of blogs. One that I have been reading for quite sometime is a mother of four very special children. One year ago she was the mother of one. Now she's the mother of four. Adrienne did not have triplets. Two of her children are adopted, one adoption is about to be finalized and her fourth child was born on July 3rd at 26 weeks and 5 days. Check out Adrienne's blog and pray for 1 pound 4 ounce Bennett.

wanna go back

Okay I don't want to replay the last year, but I would love to go walk on the Boardwalk.

SYTYCD

Finally got to watch both shows today. I haven't felt well so I haven't been able to sit down and watch with the pounding headache.

So glad Melinda is gone.

Loved the show.

Alex wowed me once again with his hip hop number. It is amazing to think that a professional ballet dancer can pull off such a fantastic routine is outstanding.

That's all I have to say.

Jennifer Update

** warning ** this is long.

How have I been doing? If I am being completely honest (and when am I not), I haven't been feeling too great lately. As far as the LDN goes, I am up to .5mg for 4 days in a row. Depending on how I do, I may only do one more round of 4 days before moving to 5 days in a row. That's what I did with the 3 days in a row. I wound up doing only one or two rounds instead of three rounds of three days. However when I began the 4 day in a row, immediately I started noticing some unsettling things.

In fact, I'm going to take you all through each day the month of June. Now keep in mind this isn't every symptom on every day, but the ones that bothered me the most to write down in my calendar to share with the doctor when I go back.

June 1st: 1mg of LDN. This is when the headache got so bad that I thought I was going to have someone drive me to the ER from work. It hurt from the bottom of my chin to the tip top of my head. There was no part of my head that didn't hurt. Instead I waited and went to the LLMD on June 2nd to see if I should stop the current regiment until later and moved up my LLMD appointment.

June 2nd and 3rd: No LDN and I still had a severe headache, but it did start easing off and by Friday June 4th I felt pretty good. It was back to almost normal. By June 5th when I saw my LLMD, I felt great. That is when we decided to inch up my dose little by little.

June 5th I took my first 1/2 dose of LDN and woke up the next morning feeling feverish and a sore throat that lasted 2 hours. I also had a small picc line bump which would become a recurring theme later in the month.

June 6th required no LDN.

On June 7th, I woke to another bump on my arm and my shoulder ached tremendously throughout the day. I wondered when I had tweaked it, but knew there was absolutely nothing I had done to cause shoulder pain. 1/2 dose of LDN that night.

On June 8th and 9th, I had a really bad symptomatic days. I had a nightmare, woke up as if I hadn't slept at all and felt fatigued all day. I had a numb mouth all day and had a severe headache. It wasn't as bad as earlier, but it was bad enough that I took Tylenol. When the 9th got htere, my mouth ached as if I had dental surgery of some kind and the small headache continued. Even though I had the pain, I continued with the LDN on the 9th.

An amazing thing happened on June 10th though. I felt awesome. I had a great day. I woke up with no pain anywhere and had energy, but the cheek jaw pain was back on the 11th and I took the 1/2 dose that night. I wound up sleeping over 14 hours that night into Saturday morning and woke up feeling very feverish even though I only had a 97 degree temp. I took another 1/2 LDN that night too. This was my first 1/2 dose twice in a row.

When I woke up with at least 3 nightmares going into Sunday the 13th and woke with a small sore throat and feeling feverish again, but after about 11am I felt normal. There was no pain anywhere, but it took me over an hour to fall asleep Sunday night. That is extremely rare for me. I usually fall asleep within 10 minutes of hitting a pillow.

June 14th and 15th required 1/2 dose LDN. I had a couple of dreams on the 13th going into the 14th, had a pretty decent day after about 10am. However, on the 15th I was freezing cold the majority of the day with a pretty decent sized headache.

June 16th I had no LDN and that particular day I felt pretty good. June 17th and 18th required my next doses of LDN. Now one thing that has been common is waking up feeling feverish, but having a low temp. This was what happened on all three days, but after about 10 I felt good.

Then on June 19th, I had a really bad symptomatic day. I had a sore throat, bad headache, sleepy all day, took a three hour nap and lots of dreams. The worst part was that when I woke up I felt feverish, but by the afternoon I was freezing so bad I couldn't keep warm enough. This happened again on the 20th. In almost the same way, but I couldn't sleep Sunday night into Monday the 21st. I had 3 or 4 nightmares that were all about death and caskets. It was horrible. I kept waking up and falling back to sleep and the same dream would happen. And that I had 3 picc line bumps. I took the LDN on the 20th and the 21st. After about 10am on the 21st, I felt pretty good though I did struggle to sleep that night with another night of dreams. I had small headaches most of the day on the 22nd and I took my first 3rd dose in a row on that night.


On June 23rd, I had my first IV dose of Iron. This would make me decide not to take LDN that night since I knew more than likely my sleeping patterns would be off since I would sleep most of the day with the dose of Benedryl required before my first dose. This caused me not to sleep at all that night only getting about 15 minutes of sleep. So the next day, I had symptomatic day with pains in my legs and severe fatigue. I also had a headache most of the day. That night I did another 1/2 dose of LDN. I felt pretty good the next day (25th), but had a picc line bump upon waking. By this point I was getting frustrated with the bumps, but I had no idea how many were in store for me. I took my next dose of LDN.

On June 26th I felt pretty good most of the day, but there was one of those bumps directly ON the spot where my picc line was inserted. This rarely happens, but when it does ... it really itches. However that was pretty much my only symptom that day. Since I felt so good I had decided this night would be night 3 of LDN, but that I would take another dose the next night no matter how poorly I felt on the 27th. In fact, I did feel great most of the 27th. However, I had not one, not two, not even three ... but SIX picc line bumps on the 27th. I did wake with a small headache, but that disappeared over the course of the day.

On June 28th, I had a headache all day and had 2 picc bumps. The 29th however was a very bad day. My upper jaw ached terribly and the headache was horrible. An itching picc bump woke me up at 11pm. I decided to take the LDN even though I could have waited another night with the severity of the headache.

June 30th. There is no other way to say it, but it just sucked. I had my second IV iron (which that in itself was fine), but my mouth and jaw hurt so bad that it hurt to eat! Therefore I was hungry most of the day. My head hurt and I had 3 bumps that stayed the majority of the day (except when I was at the doctor's office and they convinently disappeared). I took the 2nd dose of LDN and decided that if it was still this bad on the 4th night that I would take 2 days off instead of just 1.

July 1st the mouth pain was a lil better, but it still sucked with 4 picc bumps. Took another dose of LDN. And yesterday. The weirdest thing happened.

I have joint pain. My finger joints are aching like they haven't ached in well over a year. My knees and ankles hurt. My head aches. I feel feverish. I hurt all over. I just don't feel well. I took my 4th dose anyways and tonight is a skip night. Depending on how I feel, I may skip tomorrow night too. The good news IS that my jaw no longer hurts.

Now my husband kindly explained what may be happening. He said that the LDN is supposed to boost my immune system. So it very well could be and what could be happening is that my immune system is now fighting the flurry of Lyme bacteria in my body causing a herx reaction. It's just amazing that 1/2 a caps of the LND for a total of 2 caps over a four day period could cause such pain in my fingers and other regions of the body. I was hoping that my fatigue would be better with the Iron IV's, but I think the herx is counteracting it. Oh well. That's a month in the life of Jennifer.