When I was young, I seemed to have endless energy (like most kids and young people today), but starting when I was around 10 years old I began to suffer from what thought was just ‘growing pains’. These pains would come and go sporadically and would never seem to happen in the same places.
The next issues which arose in my young life were some digestive problems. Severe pain once lead me to the Emergency Room where x-rays showed an excess of built up gas in my digestive tract. At that time doctors informed my parents that I would be fine and that it would just pass. Luckily, for a little while at least, the pain did dissipate. Although it would re-appear periodically, by that time, my parents owned a health food store and my mother had become quite knowledgeable regarding various vitamins and herbs of which I was given regularly. With my mother’s know-how, whenever my digestive pains would resurface and become too much for me to handle, I would be given charcoal extract or other such digestive aids as was available at the time. These supplements would help to lessen the pain, but never fully alleviate it, or stop it from returning all together.
Then, as a teenager, came the migraine headaches. The pain would become so intense that I often had to induce vomiting to get any sort of relief. These migraines would be absolutely debilitating; leaving me in agony, while no amount of pain killers would even come close to lessening the intensity of them.
While living in my second year at university, I developed a sort of head cold and fatigue that persisted for months. Once back home again, and with the head cold and fatigue still plaguing me, my mother suggested that I try getting my food allergies tested through a naturopath. She had encountered many people who had done just that, and once they had removed specified foods from their diets, they seemed to recover their health again. So we gave it a try. I tested badly for about 15 different foods, highest on the list were Gluten, Dairy, Peanuts, and Apples. I removed all 15 items from my diet and within a month, my energy had largely returned any my head had cleared. A few months later, I retested my food sensitivities and discovered that only Gluten and select Dairy products remained disruptive to my health. During this time, I had felt healthier than I had ever felt, I
had lost around 20 pounds, and I had more energy than I did as a child.
The benefits from removing sensitive foods from my diet, although very helpful for many months, would prove temporary. Slowly my body began to fight me again. My sporadic pains increased, my headaches came back with vengeance, and my fatigue and digestive pains slowly crept back.
All of my symptoms worsened in direct relation to the increased stress from my work and personal life. By the time I was 25, I was a shell of my old self. My fatigue had gone from a regular annoyance to something so extreme that I would physically be unable to get out of bed in the morning. I would be so exhausted during the day that if I had liked coffee, I would have consumed liters of it daily. Since I’ve never really been keen on coffee, I ended up using sugar and energy drinks to help me get through my days.
It was around this time, that I developed what I assumed was a mild case of eczema. Within 2 years, the spots which I thought had been eczema, had gone from coming and going, to what seemed to be permanent. After returning home from my honeymoon, the 3-6 spots that had plagued me for the previous 2+ years began to multiply. Within 3 months I went from 3-6 spots to over 50; covering my legs, arms, chest, back, even appearing on my face. These spots, each and every one, was dry, itchy, and the worst of them would even crack and bleed.
After multiple doctor’s visit, a variety of medicated and non-medicated creams, and with only a worsening of my condition to show for it, I was at the end of my wits.
Now, as I go through my treatment protocol for Lyme Disease, my symptoms are rotating between getting better and getting worse. Herxing is a typical side effect of killing off the bacteria definitive of Lyme, and this worsening of symptoms makes going through treatment doubly hard. It’s not easy to feel worse, but at the same time, know that you actually are getting better.
So if you know someone going through treatment for Lyme Disease right now, have patience, have a heart, and know that it’s not an easy battle to win, but with the right protocol and a solid support network around them, Lyme patients can get better…I look forward to being able to say one day that I AM better…but not today…Today I fight, every minute of every day, I fight for my health so that one day I’ll be healthy again.
Lyme101 