Lyme Into Lemonade

It's been a while since I have blogged.  As much as things have changed, much has remained the same.  John is continuing to have very hard days.  He's very tired and has roving joint pain still.  We ran blood work and found low vitamin D again and low iron.  His thyroid looks good, so it's just the nutrient deficiencies and the Lyme issues.  The constant fatigue is tough to deal with, so he decided to  take a hockey break. He handled it better than I did, as I cried on and off for days.  It wasn't that he isn't playing hockey... it's the fact that he even had to choose to give up something he loves. We read in our local Lyme support group on Facebook that someone had cancelled an appointment with our doctor, so I tried to take the appointment 11 minutes after I saw the cancellation.  Nope.  Taken.  That quickly.  But, there was another slot, Tuesday at 9.  It took me 2 hrs 10 min to get to the clinic during rush hour.  Yuck.  But Dr. K as worth it.  She was im

Hockey is the one place my son feels normal. Lyme consumes many of his thoughts, so getting on the ice is his only escape. Today, however, was very different.  He met players on his new team, and apparently, a new teammate somehow knew John has Lyme.  This player is injured and was on the bench for practice.  The exchange with this kid was like this: Teammate: Wait, you have lice? John:  Huh?  Umm, no.  I don't have lice. Teammate: I thought you had a disease.  Leukemia? John:  No, I don't have Leukemia. Teammate:  But you have a disease? John:  Oh, yeah, I have Lyme disease. (Kid hobbled on crutches to get away from my "diseased" son.  Later on, the teammate's mom joined him on the bench.  Said kid was pointing and talking about John so obviously that John was aware of it during practice.) My son told me this story on the way home.  He said it was the first time that Lyme and hockey mixed and became inseparable for him. I tried to tell him that his team

Today was another visit to the homeopath (I'll call her Sue) at our Lyme clinic.  To Sue's dismay, my son was the 6th patient in a row that had stated he felt worse today than the previous month.  It's really been irritating.  We've done so much good work battling this disease.  Healthy (nasty) smoothies, hyperthermia daily, detoxing.  All of it.  We should be making progress, but we aren't.  Sue was flabbergasted.  Why is everyone worse?  It can't be a coincidence. I took to the FB Lyme groups to ask, "Who feels worse this week?"  Of 20 respondents, 18 felt worse and 2 felt better.  There were several theories offered.  First, Hurricane Irma.  Second, ragweed and mold.  Last, solar flares. We are in the Midwest, maybe close enough to have some residual effects of Irma, but nothing major.  For seasonal allergies, John has never really noticed these.  Patrick and Paul are sneezing left and right, but John and I are ok.  This leaves us with solar fla

Since visiting the FAR Clinic in Utah, I've been feeling like all our eggs are in the one proverbial basket.  I've said to friends that I don't have any more ideas on what to do to fight Lyme, beyond what we're already doing.   Lyme is like this dance, 2 steps forward, 2 steps back is common for the disease/healing.  It's why some doctors believe that you need to change your treatment protocol every 6 months - to keep the little spirochetes on their toes.  But as the "brains" of this operation, I research a lot and try to take it all in.  Sometimes, things hit me but I don't pursue them until the idea resurfaces much later.  And this week when I started getting down, it wasn't long before my mind jumped back to something I considered previously. Essiac Tea.  Have you heard of it?  It has been around a long, long time as an alternative treatment for cancer.  Some sources claim it was the Ojibwa tribe's answer to cancer.   This link  claims th

It's been a few weeks since I've published anything on this blog.  The silence had to do with being extremely busy right now.  Both Patrick and John have hockey tryouts this week, and I have been preparing to teach in our homeschool co-op.  This year, I'm teaching Algebra 1 & 2 and Chemistry.  Beyond that, I'm also teaching group cycle classes 3 times a week.  I think it's all getting to me, though, as I feel like my adrenals are headed in the wrong direction again.  Certainly my anemia is back full-force.  I feel pretty fatigued, but this blog isn't really about me. Hockey tryouts for John were kind of a test to see how his body would take the extra burden of strenuous physical activity on top of treatments.  Well, today, I report that we have surrendered.  John made it successfully through 2 back to back hockey tryouts, but today, he just couldn't make it.  He cannot do hockey today. We had a heart to heart about it.  His choices were 1) keep pushi