I'm Well Now!

I think I’m well now, and I want to tell you how I know it and how I got better. This blog deserves an ending to the nine-year saga that has been my Lyme journey. How grateful I am that I can call it an ending!

In the springtime, I noticed I had some vitality. No, I wasn’t eighteen again…but I felt lighter, happier, and fatigued less quickly than I had in a long time. These sensations distilled upon me so slowly that they were almost imperceptible. I’d say it took well over a year, possibly up to two. I couldn’t look back at last month and see a change, but if I looked back two or three months, I was astonished at how much more I could do. These were simple things like picking up the kids from school, staying ahead on the laundry, and scrubbing out the toilets regularly. These tasks were victories! I hadn’t kept up on the basics in years and years. It felt good.

So anyway, in the springtime of this year, I felt like I was functioning okay. A place had even opened up in my heart to where I felt like I could accept a ministering assignment and a more demanding calling. It might be a fluke, but I felt kind of brave, and opportunities came. Things were working. I was pretty happy.

I had an experience that got me wondering whether I was healthy and if we could add to our family someday. This had been out of the question for years! I went to my Lyme doctor and got a whole bunch of labs done, including a $600 lab to test whether I was still fighting Lyme. It tested for a bunch of different strains of Lyme and was sent all the way to Germany, and guess what—it was completely negative! This blew my mind. I was no longer fighting Lyme. The other labs looked completely normal and fabulous.

It’s possible that Lyme still lives in me somewhere, like chicken pox lives in people their whole lives after they’ve had it even though they don’t manifest it every day. But I have learned a new level of self-care that will hopefully keep the Lyme at bay. Plus, I still use my rife machine nightly for seven hours. 

My Lyme doctor completely supported me having more babies. Apparently, babies can take care of Lyme with their own immune systems before they are even born. Furthermore, rife doesn’t seem to be harmful to babies and would probably even help.

Next I went to the OBGYN. Again, I was met with support. I had labs done there as well, and again, everything was perfect. 

It took some time, but we studied it out from every angle and felt good and divinely endorsed about expanding our family. That my husband would ever even think about this is a miracle in itself. Today, I am about halfway through a healthy pregnancy, and my baby is absolutely perfect and healthy. Everything is working. We feel extremely blessed.

Now to how I got better…

You may recall my rife machine. I still used it every night and feel like it’s good for me. Medically, I think this did a lot to target and kill off Lyme pathogens over many months. I’d like to credit my health to the rife machine because perhaps then it could be a one-size-fits-all solution that anyone could use to overcome Lyme. But honestly, I think there is another thing that may have helped me even more.

About a year and a half ago, I discovered that I had come from a toxic family. One day when I modeled a behavior I had learned in my family, the Holy Ghost pricked my heart and told me it was wrong (a simplistic explanation, but I don’t want to go into detail here). I searched my heart, and with this new recognition, I knew I needed to repent and change.

This led me to asking questions about things that didn’t sit well with me about a particular relationship in my family, and somehow I realized that I had been under the influence of a pathological, high conflict personality for over thirty years. I fell into a rabbit hole of information that day and read all the scholarly work I could about different psychological disorders and how they affect victims. It was mortifying, saddening, and sobering to realize I had been a victim of emotional and verbal abuse for over three decades. I thought this is just how families ran. I thought this was how order was achieved. I thought I was a bad kid.

Thank goodness I was given the opportunity to see all of this before I modeled more behaviors and affected my own little family. I was given the chance to change and to break some really destructive patterns before I could hurt my children. 

I studied and ruminated on this for about a year. I thought about cutting off my entire relationship with this person, but it seemed impossible and extreme. Instead, I exhausted all the techniques I could read about from various psychology professionals and practitioners. I kept continued contact with this person, but put up more and more boundaries with time. I felt like a failure when continued toxic interactions would put me to bed for up to two weeks. I would wrestle with massive depression and self-questioning or self-loathing, believing the nuances that were communicated to me in such a sophisticatedly covert way. I wondered if I was imagining it all and if I was as selfish and crazy as this person said I was.

I could tell these vegetative episodes in bed were beginning to affect my children. When I was so sick, these hard times blended into my physical vegetativeness. But by this time, my children had come to appreciate times of vitality. My husband never knew when I was going to be okay and when I was going to be heartsick. We were all tired of it.

One Sunday, I was determined to get some professional help. I went out driving the next morning until I found a counseling office. I walked in and asked for an appointment. Really, what I wanted to know was if I was as bad as I felt I was, and whether I was completely crazy like I was being made out to be. I wanted to know if I was a completely horrible, wrong human, and whether this person had been right about me all along. On the other hand, maybe all the things I had tried were legitimate attempts to deal with an abusive person. I didn’t know. Turns out, I was the “most prepared” client my counselor had ever worked with because of how well-read I was and how many things I had already tried. For about six months, I went in every week and did cognitive behavioral therapy with the counselor. It was hard work. The counselor supported my self-empowerment. When I said, “I just wish I could just ___,” she’d say, “Well why can’t you?” I did things I had never done to try to become healthy.

Things got really bad in the family, and I considered even more cutting off my relationship with this one person. The counselor never planted the idea; it was mine, but I wasn’t ready just yet. It was a lot to let go of. I didn’t feel I had done enough…maybe if I just tried a little longer…

Then a horrible thing happened, and sadly my children witnessed it. They asked to never have to see the person again. They saw that the person’s aim was to scare and intimidate me into doing stuff. They saw the mask slip, and since they are beyond the age of accountability, I honored their request to stay away and committed myself to be brave and cut off all ties with this person. The pain was almost unbearable, but it drove me to be strong. Today, I have absolutely zero contact with this person, and I’ve never felt better. 

I recovered with the counselor’s help. It’s devastating to lose a parent, and I couldn’t even mourn publicly. But it was a hundred times better than staying in that relationship.

We sold our home and moved away. We’re starting over—new home, new child, new traditions for our family, everything new. I’m rewriting myself. Actually, it’s more like I am recognizing my true self, the one that was always quietly a fighter in that abusive relationship.

Anyway, chronic relationship problems raise stress hormones in the body. If you live with that for decades like I did, it can absolutely manifest in illnesses that you just can’t get over. I think they slow progress I made toward wellness perfectly aligns with the growing understanding I had in my situation and hope that I could have a happy heart one day.

Today, I live a buoyant and happy life. I notice that I laugh a few dozen times a day, at least. This is a complete and total miracle! My body is less burdened. I don’t have boundless energy; I still lie down a little every day. But I have dreams and goals and things to live for again. I have things to look forward to. Life is really sweet.

I used to not know how long I could live, but now I see the decades marching out ahead of me. There is purpose there—I’m not sure what, but it certainly has nothing to do with keeping that parent happy. Not my job!

It’s possible I could write on this blog again, but I don’t know what else I could add. I think I can maintain my life as it is now; it’s not super vivacious, and I still have a load of struggles to work through. But everyone does, and I like my load just fine. I’m blessed.

I hope this blog helps people and can continue to be a resource for people. It’s just one person’s journey. I believe each person has their own journey to wellness. It took me nine years to find light after darkness took over, but it ended. It could come back. But I like my life right now, and I’m going to go live it. 

What Now? In Pursuit of a New Dream

I’m going to skip the cliché of “Wow, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve been here” and go right to welcoming my new arrivals.

Hello! I run this blog. 

I get a lot of texts from people I know asking if I could please talk to someone they know who was just diagnosed with Lyme disease. I always give this blog address first because I remember very little of my experience (#lymebrain #selectivememory), but I blogged a lot of details in real time, right here. I hope this helps. Beyond that, hopefully you have my digits. Or know how to leave a comment.

But anyway, I am doing pretty well. Probably. About a month ago, my energy spiked. It was amazing! I felt not-dead. I took the extra energy and started lifting weights, figuring that if I increased my muscle cell count, I would increase my mitochondria, and they’d make me more ATP energy so I could keep my energy up. Science!

At the same time, I put on ten to fifteen pounds overnight. All on my upper body.

I’m in the process of finding out whether the levothyroxine I started taking right around the time of my arm diameter- and ATP-increase has anything to do with these changes. If so, I need to decide whether to be soft and tired OR more soft and energized.

#dilemma #shallow

Anyway, my life has been pretty good. I can’t believe I’m writing that, since only a few years ago I thought maybe I was maybe dying. The hardest part of a massive difficulty for me is not knowing if there is a finish line. We’ve talked about this. In school, I thrived knowing that this class HAD to end in four months when the university declared the semester over and professors submitted their final grades. But chronic illness is nothing like that, and it irks me. Stop dangling a carrot in front of my fizace!

Recently I discovered a book called The Life you were Born to Live in the thrift store, and with my new spurt of energy and no vector in which to direct it, I bought the book solely by its title and read it. Turns out it was a book about numerology, a woo-woo “science” based on your birthdate and a bunch of other numbers in your life. It was like reading one of those paper fortune tellers you make in fourth grade, and the MASH games you played in sixth, but over four hundred pages. However, a lot of stuff was right for me! It was fun to read.

Certain concept really rang true (note: I don’t believe this stuff, but stick with me). Like, apparently, maybe our lives run in nine-year cycles. Um, okay…so that means that maybe I’m pulling out of the nine-year (debilitatingly symptomatic) chronic illness slump I fell into upon conception of my first child? I therefore declare that I crossed the finish line a year ago.

I don’t know if I actually crossed the finish line and now get to gain weight and move on to the next nine years (knitting phenom? Mother of the Year? snorkel designer?). But whether my Lyme tenure is up (symptomatically) or not, I do feel I have “a new lease on life.”

What does one pursue after slapping Death in the face?

Likewise, I am entirely retired from my nursing profession, childbearing, and even my social media accounts (R.I.P.). I am recovering from major psychological juju that accompanied the nine years of trying to stay positive, plus a lifetime of mistaken ideas about myself and my potential (#perfectionism). I know I still hate the color purple, but not much else about myself.

Let us brainstorm what I could do with my next nine years:

As a little kid, I really wanted to work at a shoe store…but ew, effort, chemicals, and inventory.

As a tween, I wanted to teach swimming lessons…but ew, human soup, chlorine, and spandex.

In high school, I loved long periods of solitary study time…but ew, tests, teachers, and group projects. #introvert

College was my time for geeking out on anything written in medical jargon…but ew, germs and medical PTSD.

Sickie days were filled with wanderlust…but ew, germs, and expensive.

I used to be such an optimist…and then a realist…and now I consider daily the virtues of becoming a pessimist, such as foreseeing disaster and preventing disappointment when things don’t work out.

Maybe I feel lost because I’ve sort of achieved most of my early life’s goals:

--get scholarships

--go to my preferred university

--become a nurse

--get married to the perfect man

--have childrens

--get work experience

--adopt many critters

--don’t die of a chronic illness (I tacked that one on later)

Is this the part where I move on to the shoe store bit?

I planned to have many childrens, but we had to stop at two. Which is why I think we have three critters, all varying in size, fat percentage, and dorkiness. #mymalamuteisadork Maybe my work is to hold down the fort, which I'm trying to do, and lurve my childrens the most, which I definitely do. I could do that. But maybe add in some hobbies too.

Updates to follow when I Rapunzel this life and pick a new dream. Suggestions welcome.