Between the Past and Future

There is a strong desire in most peoples lives: Change. We want to change something all the time, all day long. We are unsatisfied. We forget to live in the moment and seem to waiver between the past and future forgetting the NOW. I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Partly because of a book I am reading (Peaceful Warrior) and partly because of my struggle to live with more joy than angst.

I have been dreaming wondering (anxiously awaiting!) about what my life will be like once I am well.  After much contemplation, I think it will be much of the same.  Restlessness, frustration, aggravation, disappointment, joys, support, laughter, inner strength and fun.  I want to relax into those things more now and remind myself not to wait for life to begin.  Remind myself on days like today, when my mind is full of energy yet my body has a schedule of pills, strict diet, detoxing and little strength.  A day where I got to read and watch a movie and will get to spend time hanging out talking with my kids when they get home from school.  This is a demanding yet wonderful place in life.  As will the next stage and next stage in life.  


I remember after I had my first child,  I had a visit from the pastors wife to meet our newborn baby.  I asked which age did she enjoy her kids the most.  She said every age was her favorite because each was filled with so much joy but equally so much hard work!  I have fully agreed!  My kids are now 9 &12 and I continue to find each year my favorite! 


When I focus on what I don't want I end up living in the past or future but missing the NOW.  I want to slow myself to see the small beauties in the mundane and the treasures among the tedious days.  My joy is now!

Okay Today

This disease is costly with my time, our time and financially. But within every hardship is a chance for a new perspective.

I get so much time to sit and chat with the kids and get to do this EVERY day when they get home from school!
I get to watch them play with the neighborhood kids in front of our house, (30 kids live within a few blocks!).
I get time to meditate and explore the meaning of life and re evaluate the simple pleasures in life.
I get to discover the strength that is within me to be tediously consistent with hourly medications and various treatments throughout each day.
I get the love and support of a husband who struggles with the intensity of this disease yet chooses to stay and love me.

For these things & more, I am grateful.

Food: Holidays, Comfort & Cravings

I am proud to say I didn't cheat with food on Easter.  The only thing I had that I shouldn't of was non-organic ham, but I had to have something to eat at Grandma's besides veggies!  I didn't give in to my love for chocolate.  I would find myself gazing at the kids candy and then snap out of it!!   The cinnamon rolls at breakfast and crescent rolls at dinner so tempted me, but thankfully I held up! 

This was not the case on the last holiday celebration.  Before that holiday dinner, I had been off all types of sugar/carbs/dairy for many months and for the first time in my life I was no longer craving junk food.  I begun to feel mentally strong with my relationship with food.  Then we were at the holiday family dinner and I felt like an odd ball eating only the meat and veggies, which equated to hardly anything on my plate.  When it came time for dessert I decided I was going to try a bite of cake.  However, I was served a slice and before I knew it I felt like the cake was the ring in "The Lord of the Rings" and it was my precious!  I couldn't stop eating it!  I gobbled up the whole piece.  That sugar put my body way out of balance and let the Candida feast, grow and become strong.  Basically, it wreaked havoc on my immune system.  The ridiculous thing was the reason I took a piece.  I ate dessert to look normal because I was worried about what family (extended family who know nothing of my disease) would think of my crazy diet and of me.  Very unreasonable thinking, I now know.  I was left felling guilty, immature and weak.  In the coming months I couldn't help but take time thinking about what I was trying to hide and why.

  Since then I have relaxed into my diet although the cravings have been so tough since then.  To be honest, I've been cheating every few weeks with just a bite or 2 of something a family member has left on the counter.  I will become overwhelmed with an urgency to get just a piece and then a moment later when the flavor is gone, I ponder why the hell I just did that.  The joy lasted just a minute and then poof: Gone!  Why did I do that?  What made me think I needed that?  IT makes me sicker and what benefit did I get in return?  Nothing!  Nothing.

I am still working through my relationship to food.  I think it is human to have a "relationship" with food.  We were given taste yet live in a society that is about quick food.   Lately, I have been very frustrated with not being able to grab comfort food. Like homemade mac n cheese, breads or pizza or even just grab an "easy" meal.  It is really tough making sure all the food I eat is pure nourishment.  The average person doesn't eat like that, if fact I don't think hardly anyone eats like that all the time.  But I am very sick and need this healing to be as quick as possible!

I am trying to build my relationship with food to be healthier but full of passion!  I want my taste buds to get excited at least at some of the meals!  I do LOVE flavorful chicken salad with chunks of fresh basil and good olive oil!  I relish in it. The challenging thing is that everything that tastes good, takes preparation, time and planning!  Which means it all takes Energy, which I have a limited supply of.  Hence the challenge.  These are a few of my favorite easy eats: Brussell sprouts baked in olive oil, red bell pepper & hummus, carrots and almond butter with cinnamon, raw cashews baked in coconut oil, almonds baked in Tamari sauce, avocado with fresh basil and salt on rice cake, pecans fried in coconut oil and cinnamon, sweet potatoes with butter and cinnamon.

The other day my husband said to me, "You are learning to eat so well, treating yourself to delicious tasting food for your meals that once you are well you won't want to eat junk food! It won't taste good".  I hope he is right!!

One of My Jobs!

This is one  of my weekly jobs, filling my pill containers (Monday-Sunday).  I am conflicted on sharing the details of my job.  One the one hand, the point of this blog is to tell my Lyme story.  On the other hand, I feel like an oddity.  For a long time, I was sick in ways no one around me could understand (myself and doctors included).  
Since being diagnosed with Lyme Disease, I am also working through changing my perspective of going from an unknown plaguing illness to "I know what it is!"

  However, it is still hard to bring to light the details of what I do on a daily basis to heal.  To look at the list of tasks makes me sound ludicrous and a bit excessive.  So let me begin by saying why I do all of these things.       After much research I have come to trust my doctor and this protocol I follow.  However, the main reason for my discipline with research and my daily schedule is I am committed to heal!  I have goals, and dreams and a constant desire to be part of LIVING!  Just being around my husband and kids makes me not want to miss anything!  So with that focus clear in my mind throughout each day I am willing to have my job be "getting well".    

   My full time job is Healing.  It is what I work on throughout each day, everyday.  I am on strict orders from the doctors to take this seriously because so many parts of my body have been on the verge of collapsing.  Blood work is amazingly beautiful in the way it can take pictures of whats going on inside, and thankfully help explain my symptoms.  All of this damage from the spirochetes will take 3-5 years to heal from.  I am still in year one of that process.  At my last doctors appointment, my doctor said “You are small but mighty!  I can’t believe how well you are doing considering how sick you are.  Keep up the good work!”.  The “good work” is my job and consists of  following all of the suggestions my doctor gives me. 

 Here are my Jobs:

-----Between the hours of 9am and 2pm I take pills every hour on the hour.  I take just shy of 100 pills a day at various times during the day.

-----Once a week, I fill my pill containers.  As you can see in the picture I set up the recycle close by so I can toss in empty pill bottles, I also set up piles for different containers I use throughout the day.  Thanks to an organizational guru, my mom, this whole process only takes me about an hour.  Before she helped me set up a system it was much harder and mistakes were more easily made.  Now I have a spreadsheet that has all the pills numbered with information about each pill like how many pills I take, how many times a day I take it, when I take it, and how often to reorder.  Since each medication/supplement is numbered, I just line em’ up and start the refilling!

-----I juice fresh carrot with some combination of (garlic, parsley, celery, beet, cabbage ect) at least 2 times a week.  I reference the book Super Juice for all things juicing, like detailed nutritional information. 

-----I use a infra red sauna 2 times a week.   www.promolifenews.com/far-infrared-elixir-of-light/

-----Everyday I go for a walk for anywhere between 3-30 minutes.  It sounds humerus, but how long I walk really depends on how my body is doing on each particular day.  6 months ago I couldn’t walk even 3 houses down.  So I began by walking 2 houses and never pushing myself too much.

-----I cook a double batch of dinner (usually stews/soups) 4 times a week and pack in serving sizes to eat for breakfast and lunches.  Combined with that is meal planning and if I am up for it grocery shopping.  If not my hubby will do the shopping.  He does nearly all the clean up and cooks the other nights.

-----I do a coffee enema 1 time a week (sounds gross and embarrassing but helps and everything I have read has said it is an amazing way to detox. And inexpensive! You should try it!) http://www.livestrong.com/article/267222-what-are-the-benefits-of-coffee-enemas-to-cleanse-the-colon/

http://www.gerson.org/

-----Detox baths 2+ times a week (2 cups baking soda, 2 cups Epsom salt)

-----Dry brushing 5+ times a week (using a natural Bristol brush                                     -Resting/meditating/napping with mind at rest throughout each day.  Basically, between each activity I do a whole lotta resting.

-Drinking more water than I think I can bear!  I was getting 8-10 of 8oz glasses of water but my blood work kept coming back saying I need to drink more!  So now I am drinking more! Herbal teas 4+ times a week.

I am still trying to figure out the balance of the other areas of my life & my job.  Categorizing it as a job does help me relax into its role in my life. 

Under Our Skin-My words never spoken

Awe.  I am in awe of this film.  It had me mesmerized by its brutal honesty.  It was as if my plight was being told.  It felt like home.  Home is a place where you can be honest, cry, rest, recuperate.

The experience in watching the movie was cathartic.  I felt naked and exposed.  It meant I no longer needed to hide.  I could relax into who I am.  Or who I was recently.  I was a mistreated patient, who had been unsure if I was loosing my head or just the function of my body.  I have been unable to protect my kids from whats wrong with momma, and weary at the preconceived ideas of what a mom should be.  I am a woman who was finally ready to lay bare before my friends.

Under Our Skin did an amazing job at showing the full spectrum of what I have been dealing with in my Lyme Disease.  I was enraged at seeing all the pieces fit together as to why my diagnosis has been so hard to obtain.  These are the reasons I haven’t been able to articulate to my friends and family the depth of my illness.  This movie is essentially the story of the last decade (or two) of my, well actually, our lives.

That is why I passionately say, “I would love for you to see it.  You gotta see it!”!    

Under Our Skin followed the journey of people dealing with their extensive amount of symptoms and the effects it has on their daily lives.  It showed the unfortunate battle in the courtroom that is constantly taking place with Doctors who are willing to treat Lyme patients. It investigated the Conflicts of interests in the members who are in charge of the IDSA guidelines for Lyme. That was incredibly infuriating for me to learn!  Those 12 questionable members, have been updating the guidelines for over 15 years!   The documentary also made the comparison for the treatment of Lyme to various diseases.  The current Lyme treatment guidelines are to treat with antibiotics for up to 2 weeks.  However, no other serious disease is treated for such a short amount of time.

Under Our Skin reminded me how lucky I am to have a supportive husband, children & mom, to have support to pay for medical care so my disease isn't fatal, to have found an amazing Lyme literate doctor who is willing to put their life on the line for patients.

I am also immensely grateful for Dr. Alan McDonald, who explained how his research discovering Biofilm, dismantles the argument that Lyme is all in your head!  Biofilm explains why I have Chronic Lyme and why it is hard to treat.  Basically, the same strand of bacteria may be hundreds or thousands of times more resistant to antibiotics because the colony of Borrellei is protected by a gel like substance.

        “The fact that Lyme is a significant disease that there is no cure for and no accurate testing-should scare people” Under Our Skin

Although it was difficult to watch this film, creating a vast array of emotions, it also filled me with hope. I realized I too could become unashamed of my story.  If changes to this whole system can be made, there is hope for future Lymies.  Advocacy is a must. 

My hope is to have as many people as possible watch the film creating a snowball effect to bring awareness to this disease. To begin that awareness, I want to get at least 30 people in 30 days to watch this movie.  After you watch it, or if you recently watched it, answer my poll question (to the right-Did you watch Under Our Skin?).  Then we can tract how many people are seeing it!  

You can now rent it or buy it through Amazon on this blog and I get a small percentage.I would love to read your comments and have you choose to follow my blog!  Thanks for checking out this article!