I can’t proclaim that I am actually branching out but I am venturing into some possible video options to add to this blog. I’ve never done this at all so thanks for trying it out with me! It’s something I’ve wanted to experiment with for awhile now, but honestly, I was too scared to do it. For lots of reasons. But watching my husband use Snapchat and Instagram all the time, I figured, “why not?”
I hope my first video isn’t too horrible. I know I need serious practice with this medium. I hope your Sunday is going well, and thanks for checking out my first video and my YouTube Channel! Take care, friends!
Howdy ya’ll! I hope your summer is sailing along smoothly. I always feel extra lucky because as a teacher, I have summers off (kinda). The first 6 years I taught, I worked in the summer. I spent 3-4 summers as a shift manager at Starbucks (I had been a manager for them before teaching) and then I spent about 3 summers teaching as an adjunct.
After that, sometimes, I would teach a summer high school course. This wouldn’t be all summer, just 3 weeks. And some summers, I attended conferences and or week-long workshops. However, these past 4 years, I haven’t done anything of the sort. I struggle to keep my summers work-free so I can rest and try to get my health on track.
I now marvel at the things I used to do before getting severely ill. I also used to adjunct during the school year, usually teaching one evening college class each semester. No can do now. And so, because of illness, I have definitely modified my activities.
But back to this summer. So some things I’ve been able to do that I normally cannot manage while working:
1. Hangout with friends. Nothing fancy but stuff like dinner and lunches. Just visiting and spending time together.
2. Go grocery shopping! I’m so not lying. This chore can be so overwhelming and so full of anxiety for me I just cannot manage it. So I’ve actually sort of enjoyed (except the bill!) going grocery shopping for us this past month.
3. Spend time with family. With energy so limited while I am working full-time, it is rare to just get together with family and visit. It’s a total gift to get to do this unplanned.
4. Be upright and not in pain after 4 p.m. daily. Sure, I still have to rest. And yes, I do still have pain periodically any time of day, but it’s nice to know that some days, I can be up and active in the afternoon, on a weekday!!!
So as you can see, there’s nothing too crazy going on here this usmmer. But I’m glad I have the time to do a few cool things I can’t do normally.
I’m off to cook some dinner for my husband. I forgot to add that to my list! 🙂
Happy Summer, friends. Talk to you sooner than later. -b
** “I have been given this product as part of a product review through theChronic Illness Bloggersnetwork. Although the product was a gift, all opinions in this review remain my own and I was in no way influenced by the company.” **
If you are a first-time visitor, well, HOWDY!! And thanks for stopping by! Here are some other posts you might like check out:
Hi, my people! Well, here we are, post-election in the states and moving quickly towards the holidays.
When I was first diagnosed with Chronic Lyme disease, now almost 4 years ago, I thought I knew what it was all about. You get bit by a tick, you might get sick, and then you are treated and cured quickly. HAHAHA! Little did I know! So once I began researching this crazy and unpredictable disease, I began realizing that there is no CURE. That in many cases, including mine, Lyme cannot be merely treated with 14-28 days of oral antibiotics. Not even. And I began to understand, especially after being sick 6 – 12 months, that I was going to have to try out some unconventional, non-Western medicine options, to treat this bacterial infection.
I had been hearing and reading about CBD oil long before I decided to try it out. Information was mixed but the one common denominator seemed to be QUALITY of the product. Yet, I had no idea where to even begin. My first foray into the CBD sphere was, and now regrettably, a product I found and purchased from a seller on Craigslist. I know, I know. Believe me, I really was clueless, and in my Lyme social circle, no one had a recommendation for me. But I knew that I wanted to try this option. No Bueno. Honestly, I think there was turpentine in it. I tried to take it a few times, but the taste was just so disgusting, I could barely gag it down.
From that point on, I realized, and the hard way, that I needed to invest in QUALITY. I continued my research and then recently, I was offered an opportunity to try out HoneyColony’s CBD Oil. I have tried this company’s products in the past, and I have not been disappointed. I jumped at the chance to try out their CBD Oil.
HoneyColony’s CBD Hemp Oil is a blend of several ingredients, including Teasel root as well Astragalus Root. You can visit this page for a much more detailed list and explanation. I have tried both of these roots before in the past with some positive effects, but not at the same time and not as a part of a CBD Oil mix. When my product arrived, I was really excited to give it a shot!
I know some people may be hesitant to try CBD Oil as there is a lot of misinformation out there, including that it makes you “high.” However, according to HoneyColony, “Cannabidiol (CBD) is extracted from the Cannabis plant and has no euphoric properties whatsoever. This formulation offers all the health benefits of CBD without the feeling of being high.” At no point of my using this product have I ever had a euphoric feeling or a feeling of being “high.”
The first stop I made before adding this product to my daily routine was at HoneyColony’s 13 Commonly Asked Questions about their Superior CBD Oil product ranging from ingredients to usage. Since this quality CBD oil is mixed with coconut oil (no weird ingredients in this product!), this oil has a very smooth taste. There is no aftertaste nor did it bother my throat or stomach. It is silky sweet and easy to administer. I take just a drop in the morning and then one at night. While I haven’t necessarily seen a huge impact in the morning for myself (and mornings are so, so difficult for me), I have experienced an effect in the evening. While I struggle with getting up, the joint stiffness and fatigue, lately, I have really been having sleep issues. I can go to sleep, but then I tend to wake up 3-6 times a night. It’s been a serious hindrance in the past few months.
So I started taking a drop of oil about an hour before bedtime as suggested on the 13 Commonly Asked Questions page. This seems to help me relax enough to get to sleep. Recently, I have also started taking a drop when I wake up during the night. Doing this has been beneficial in helping me get back to sleep and to stay asleep throughout the night!
Look, HoneyColony products are top-quality products! Yes, the price is higher, but again, the QUALITY is worth every penny. I’ve tried enough other inferior CBD oil options to pay twice over what the cost of one of HoneyColony’s CDB bottles cost. I’ve thrown away more that I care to share. And this bottle that I received about a month ago is still more than half full. I won’t go anywhere else in the future to purchase CBD Oil other than HoneyColony!
Happy Sunday, my friends. Take care – B
P.S. If you are a first-time visitor, well, HOWDY!! And thanks for stopping by! Here are some other posts you might check out:
Make it happen!Lately, I have been feeling like I haven’t been hitting the mark. What is the mark, you ask? Just feeling like everything is balanced. Right now, I don’t feel balanced in my work nor in my personal life. The scale has been unavoidably tipped, and all of my time seems spent on How I Feel. I am diligently working towards getting this scale balanced again, but now, throwing work back into the mix, it feels like an impossible mark to hit. While my job is rewarding in so many ways, it also drains every ounce of physical and mental energy I can muster each day. By the time I make it home, I feel wasted and withered, no matter how easy or how difficult the day has been. I can’t seem to change these dynamics, which is so frustrating!
After years of fatigue and physical pain, I still haven’t figured out how to squirrel away any energy for myself and my personal life while I am working. I wish I had like a bank where I could deposit blocks of energy, then withdraw as needed! How awesome would that be! When I feel this way, Guilt stealthily creeps in, the guilt involved with not feeling like a productive partner in my marriage, like an active participant in social events with friends, like an emotional engaged human. I know guilt is self-imposed and controllable, but it is my go to feeling when I am worn out and stressed. No bueno. Trying to play psychological games with myself, every time I feel “guilt”, I am working to replace it with feeling “Grateful” instead. Am I hitting the mark? Who knows.
Yesterday, I started feeling Guilty for not immediately reading a student’s novel she wanted to share with me. I asked her to email it to me for future reading. Realizing the Guilt was moving in quickly, I endeavored on removing the Guilt and replacing it with the Gratitude that this person is willing to share a piece of herself with me. I will read the novel, and I will give feedback. I just couldn’t manage it during my lunch break yesterday. It’s all good.
Do you feel Guilt? Do you feel like you are hitting the Mark?
I am sure everybody hits points in their lives when they sit back for a moment and reflect on where they are, what their plans are for the future, how will they get things accomplished, etc. I know I used to do this periodically. Reflection has always been a part of my life. Pre-Lyme disease, I was always positive that the future would always be filled with unending growth and opportunities, both personal and otherwise.
Now? I’m in the midst of trying to treat a real illness, one that has been in my body silently and insidiously taking over. Lyme bacteria – a corkscrew-shaped bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi – has played the Lyme Long Con with me and hundreds, I mean THOUSANDS, of others. For years and years it has slowly but surely, patiently, illness after illness, entered almost every single system in my body.
But the CDC and IDSA (Infectious Diseases Society of America) panel are also complicit in this LONG CON, the Lyme Lie, the Lyme denial, against all of us. For years, the CDC has claimed that Lyme disease is difficult to contract and easy to treat. Yet, in the past 40+ years, science has confirmed that there are 300+ strains of Borrelia bacteria with Lyme being merely only one of these 100s of strains that are all transmitted by ticks, fleas, and mosquitos worldwide.
This is so ludicris at this point that I honestly don’t understand how the CDC can still be promoting this misinformation. Just a few years ago, the CDC changed its number of newly contracted Lyme infections from 30,000 to 300,000 yearly. Yes, from 30,000 to 300,000!! A YEAR. And many believe that this number is much lower than actual cases each year. 300,000 PER YEAR. Let that sink in. Just to give us some perspective, there are about 50,000 new HIV cases and 200,000 breast cancer cases each year in the US. Yet, almost no money is going into researching Borrelia complex diseases.
I want to scream that BORRELIA INFECTIONs are real. LYME IS REAL. CHRONIC LYME IS REAL. CHRONIC LYME IS HAPPENING TO thousands of PEOPLE, not only in this country but globally as well! As patients, we need to have access to treatment, individualized treatment, treatment that lasts more than a mere 2-4 weeks of antibiotics. You may say, but what the heck does this have to do with your first paragraph. Well, everything, my friends.
Lyme has stopped me, as well as thousands of others, in my path. It has stalled me for awhile, off and on for years, and I unknowingly placed faith in the CDC, the American healthcare system, in my doctors, faith in health insurance companies. I placed my FAITH in these entities sure that they would find out why I was dealing with strange health issues off and on over the span of 3-4 years. They didn’t.
Then, I put faith into the fact that once diagnosed, I would be treated, and I would have a recovery plan. Alas, getting a Lyme diagnosis almost means nothing. The USA has done absolutely nothing to improve research, diagnosis, nor treatment since the disease was discovered (it’s been around for thousands of years) in 1975. Yes, take that in. 1975. We know almost nothing more now than we did then. In the meantime, THOUSANDS of people have gone undiagnosed and untreated. Thousands have been misdiagnosed with MS, Lupus, and ALS, along with other diseases and gone untreated for Borrleia infections. Why??? The treatment for Lyme and other Borrelia infections has not and cannot be easily monetized – YET. So we wait. And 300,000+ and more become infected every single year.
So here I am. Halted. Stopped for much longer than anticipated. Perhaps, stopped here permanently. I know, I know. I need to be positive. I need to buck up. I need to stop focusing on my illness. Most days, I can manage this. But this past month, not so much. Sometimes, we just need to GRIEVE a loss.Sometimes, we need to be ANGRY. Sometimes, we just need to BE.
If you would like more information about Borrelia infections (this includes Lyme bacteria infections) then please watch Under Our Skin. It provides some basic information regarding Lyme disease as well as information about how the CDC and the IDSA are working in tendem, not only to discredit Lyme doctors and patients daily, but on a much larger scale, how these two organizations are undermining the most dangerous health crisis of our time.
Please be careful. LYME IS EVERYWHERE – WORLDWIDE. Take care, my friends – B
Doesn’t make it so! Over the past few months, this is what I wanted to say several times to a doctor I decided to “try” out.
After testing CDC positive for Lyme disease again in February, even with 3 years of treatment under my belt, I won’t lie. I was feeling really lost as far as how to progress with a treatment plan. My LLMD put me on a Z pack for 5 days and that was it. I am sure he did not want to throw me back onto antibiotics if at all possible. But still. I was really not feeling confident in what path we would take at this point in the game.
A friend of mine had recently visited a local rheumatologist. I reviewed the doctor’s website, and it actually advertises that she treats for Lyme disease. Oh, the awesome feeling I had! Most doctors know nothing about Lyme and about nil advertise Lyme on their website. Yes, to say the least, I got my hopes up. The further to fall, some would say.
And lo and behold, she knew nothing about Lyme. She prescribed me Lyrica for my fibromylgia pain on my first visit to her, without any labwork, without checking other diagnostic criteria I expected. She ordered about 15 vials of blood taken to test for other auto-immune diseases. When I told her I had been treating Lyme, she actually asked me if I had been bitten by a tick. Seriously!?! In almost the same breath, she told me that there should have been no reason for my being put on antibiotics for so long. I felt the pit in my stomach growing. I told her about the severe fatigue I was experiencing. I brought her the bloodwork showing my CDC positive results.
Honestly, I don’t think she even looked at the lab report. I did a follow-up visit but it was more of the same. Although I was glad to know that I did not test positive for any other issues, she did not help me at all. I am not taking the Lyrica; I have decided, thanks to my 2 other doctors who do know about Lyme disease, to pursue a more natural approach to treatment.
I guess I knew that it was too good to be true that this doctor I tried out really would know Lyme. While this was disappointment, it wasn’t necessarily unexpected. However, what was somewhat unsettling is how quickly she was willing to put me on medication. Not antibiotics mind you, but the Lyrica. For my severe fatigue, she told me to drink more caffeine. I suggested this would not be good for my adrenals and she stated that my adrenals are probably shot anyway so it wouldn’t make a difference. I was shocked. This was the last straw.
Lesson learned? This whole incident did emphasize that my 2 LLMDs know what they are doing, at least for me personally.
I hope you had a great weekend. I’m back at it; fighting the good fight. Peace – B
These past 3 weeks have been kind of a blur. Week before last, I had severe nausea. No vomiting. But let me tell you, the nausea kicked my butt. I missed a couple of days of work, and it was a huge pain to get into my doctor’s office. I saw her PA and he prescribed me an anti-nausea medication along with Tama -Flu. He told me that most likely I had picked up a bug. And since I am a teacher, this seemed plausible. Except for the fact that my left elbow has been hurting daily, my left knee has been hurting, and there’s the nausea to top it all off.
I took all of my meds as instructed. Then last week, I caught a cold, I guess. Luckily, I already had an appointment with my doctor that I had made months in advance and forgot to cancel. This time I had all of the above plus lower back pain and the incessant cough. After xrays for my back and a check-up, I was diagnosed with Bronchitis which I do get occassionlly. I was sent home with antibiotics and a day off from work. Before I left the office, my doctor ran a CBC as well as a Lyme test. She does this almost every 3 months to see what if anything is showing up. You can check out more information about Lyme disease testing here.
Honestly, I didn’t think twice about the bloodwork since it is done so regularly and most of the time, not much changes. This time, however, I am a winner of the Lyme contest! I tested 100% CDC positive for Lyme. Again. I have not had this result since I tested almost 3 years ago to the day when I was first diagnosed. Yet, this is not a new infection. In fact, this is the SAME infection as I have had for several years now!
I am sure this is why I have felt yucky these past few weeks with no relief.
My guess is that since I was taken off of the antibiotics in November, the bacteria have now come out to play. Oh, Borrelia burgdorferi, you are definitely a worthy opponent! See, this bacteria is very smart. It can and will leave the bloodstream to hide in tissues, joints, muscles, brain, nerves. Anywhere it can burrow to be out of harm’s way. It can also build cysts around itself for defense. Anyway, NOW WHAT? My doctor put me on a Z pack. But that is only for 5 days. What am I doing about this for the next 3 weeks until I see her again and my other doctor out of town? As you can see, I’m a little freaked out about it all. I have a call into my doctor to check on this treatment protocol and in the meantime, I am going to see a Rheumatologist who supposedly treats Lyme. We’ll see.
All I know is I have to keep trying whatever I can to get rid of this infection. It has reared its ugly head at a time I thought I could move beyond traditional medicine to treat and boost my immune system. But it has proven me wrong for now. I hope all is well in Bloggerland. Take care and make sure you always assume ticks are out there whever you live!
TGIF! Wow. What a week. I really hope yours was better than mine. As I have mentioned in some of my previous posts Turbulence of Lyme Symptoms, Fire in the Hole, and Derailed, there is a lot of inconsistency in how Lyme will manifest itself each and every day. There are some things, in my case, that stay pretty constant such as daily headaches, joint pain, and fatigue. But then there are those other issues that crop up from time to time, I guess maybe they are flares?, and it is impossible to prepare. What’s the saying, the devil is in the details?
And so last Sunday, I started having severe nausea. It lasted the entire day. I couldn’t eat, sleep or do anything. I just laid in bed, trying not to move around. The moving made the nausea worse. Indeed, it was a day where I just wished I could get out of my body for even like 10 minutes to get some relief. I chalked it up to eating some jalapeno sausage that morning; I knew I shouldn’t have eaten it but it was delish but soooo not worth it.
Unfortunately, no. The illicit sausage was not the problem. On Monday, when I tried to get up to get myself ready for work, I felt really nauseated. Then, the headache joined in. There was no way I could make it to work, let alone teach all day. Monday and Tuesday were more of the same. In the meantime, I was trying desperately to get into my Lyme doctor (LLMD) but there were no appointments available- for the entire week. Whaa? They were very clear that they could NOT fit me in even if I came in when they opened and waited. When I explained again my symptoms, the front desk told me that a nurse would return my call that afternoon. That was Tuesday. By Wednesday evening, no one had called me. Although I was able to get up and go to work on Wednesday, by that afternoon the nausea was back rearing its ugly head. Now, please do not think that I have an entitlement issue. I realize doctors are extremely busy and overbooked. I realize that there are other patients out there who also need to get in for a visit.
On the flip side though, this is my doctor who is treating me for Lyme disease. I can’t just go “anywhere” to get treatment. Other doctors, and almost all here in the South, are not trained on Lyme nor do they actually believe it exists here in Texas. This is the state of the medical options we have for Lyme here and in way too many other places in the US. In fact, Lyme is endemic to Texas. Check out this research done by Texas A & M University “Lyme Endemic to Texas.” Thus, going to another doctor is really more of a waste of time than anything. The ER was an option if I started having other issues, but mostly it was the severe nausea that was the new thing. All of my other symptoms are dealt with in the daily grind; they ebb and flow. But the nausea. God, it was (is) the worst.
It feels like I need to throw up (sorry TMI!) but I can’t. That kind of nausea. No vomiting though. I tried to stay very hydrated. I tried eating Saltines off and on. Yet, about 30 minutes after eating or drinking tea or Sprite, hello tummy monster! Anyway, I emailed my doctor, and I was able to get in yesterday afternoon. Supposedly, I have a virus. I say supposedly because honestly, I think it is more Lyme related than anything else. But I took what I could get which at this point was to get some sort of relief from this symptom. I was prescribed Tamiflu and anti-nausea meds and told to come back next week if it was still going on. Today was better because of the anti-nausea meds, but I’m still having experiencing the nausea.
This is how the Lyme bacteria works. It is a very stealthy and intelligent. According to Lymedisease.org, “Lyme disease is caused by a spirochete—a corkscrew-shaped bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi. If not treated as soon as infected, then the chances of it reproducing and getting into every system of one’s body is extremely probable. Now granted, not everything can be attributed to Lyme. But for me, most of the time, my symptoms are directly related to Lyme disease.
Again, I hope you all had a much better weekly journey than I did. Take care – B
Pretty much nothing. I have been lazy all day long. Or honestly, resting. I did get two loads of laundry done, and I paid some bills online. Other than that though, I spent most of the day in bed with the heating pad and the puppies.
This was our first week back at work after Winter Break. While it went well and I have no complaints, I am wiped out. And I try not to worry about the next close to 18 weeks this semester; it is difficult not to. It isn’t productive at all, and I know this, so moving on.
Also, I have been without the BB drops I have been taking the past 7 weeks for about a weekish. This was mostly due to my own inability to plan ahead. I just started back on them last night. I’m trying not to lose ground, so I am back on at 12 drops twice daily. We’ll see how that goes!
The weather here which has been damp and cold, is causing me stiffness and lower back pain for most of the week and even more today. At least I will blame it on the weather. But who knows if it is the weather or a Lyme flare or both? Ah, the mysteries of Life!
Oh, wait, I did go outside, and believe me it was mega windy and cold. No snow here though, and so that makes it much less of a big deal for sure. Deciding to move the 2 bags of birdseed, 35 pounds each, into the storage shed was a large task for me. But the bags have been either in my car trunk or outside the gate to the front yard for a solid 2 weeks. Moved them inside the gate, into the wagon, filled all of the feeders, like 5, and then moved the bags into my mom’s little storage shed (she lives next dorr and we share about an acre and a half). There you have it. The big action for today! At least all of the birds were impressed and happy.
It may freeze tonight but it is kind of cloudy out. If it clears off, we’ll get a freeze tomorrow night for sure. Wish me luck that I get more done tomorrow. At the very least, I will have to run into the small town near us and get a coffee maker. Mine took a dive today and well, there is absolutely nothing worse than not having that Juice of Life cup of coffee when I rise. It ain’t pretty people. I hope you all had a waaaay more productive and less painful day than I.
Are my people counting down the days until Christmas? Did you make those brown paper bag reindeer with the colored paper rings to keep track of each day until…? If you celebrate Christmas, well, Happy Christmas! And if you don’t, then Happy ——! We celebrate everything here. Why not? Life is so short. So only six days, my pretties.
Today, I want to explore the topic of Lyme and concentration. Or the lack of this skill, really. While I have never been a huge fan of multitasking – I think this word means doing a lot of things with less quality – I never struggled all that much to do it. In the past, working as a bartender, a waitress, a food and beverage manager, the skill of multitasking has served me well (no pun intended). As a teacher now, juggling 100 different things at the same time? No problem. B.L. though. Before Lyme. No Problem.
Until Lyme. A.F.? After Lyme? Multitasking? Surely, you jest! Holding more than one thought in my head at any given moment? Impossible. Seriously. When I was first diagnosed about 3 years ago, I could barely even read anything over a paragraph long. For one, I had headaches or one headache, non-stop. Two, I could not follow a train of thought that lasted more than 4-5 sentences on paper. This also applied to listening to thoughts/conversations. The more I tried to concentrate, the harder it seemed to understand. It is difficult to explain. Some people call this brain fog. And while that is good description, it is also like being stuck in quicksand ( in real life, this has never happened to me but I’ve always been told I have a vivid imagination). So like quicksand, a thought would come into my brain and the more I tried to sort it out, extend it, apply it, the more it became unreachable in my mind.
And while I am using past tense verbs to describe this issue, this symptom does return periodically. I’ve noticed it becomes more amplified in several instances, such as when I am trying to get work completed on a deadline, when I am fatigued, when I am stressed, and when there is too much stimuli in my environment. It is the same exact way I used to feel in my twenties when I was busy with work and college and sleep was a nap here and there. Just no concentration skills.
I guess I am thinking about this because of the holidays, the end of the semester, the stress, the lack of concentration, the brain fog, the quicksand, it’s all back and with a vengeance. But, these past few weeks at work have been nonstop kinda crazy. Finals for the community college, grades calculated, grades entered, students exempting or not exempting, students with grade issues, passing rates, plans for January, syllabus organizing and writing, end of the grading period, end of the semester, final exams, grading said final exams, and etc.! My colleagues are also feeling a little crazy so I am chalking up my exacerbated issues to the end of the semester shenanigans. To counteract my brain’s lack of focus, I like to sit in a dark room with absolutely no stimuli. This seems to help a bit.
Have you ever had these symptoms? Do you find it difficult to concentrate? How do you deal with it?
Hoping your Saturday is filled with good stuff – B
Navigating the nasty mess that is living with chronic illness, keeping in mind the sage wisdom of Lil Wayne ,"Bitch I'm ill not sick," Just out here trying to be the illest.
