Shake, Rattle, and Roll

Call them twitches, tremors, or seizure-like tics.  I call them a sad reality of the battle going on in my central nervous system.  Lasting from a few minutes to 14 1/2 hours, you are stuck in bed or on the couch until they run their course.  Move or be touched and they intensify.  Geez!

Today they returned after an almost 48 hour hiatus (for which I was grateful).  That translates to an afternoon with a 2 hour pre-tic nap followed by 7 1/2 hours of tics on and off.  Geez again!  Wracking my brain to try to figure out what helped stop them other episodes and I did discover a few things.  Only problem is that those things that help combat one episode, don’t work the same after about 2 trials.  Sometimes, especially if it’s a drug, it eventually makes it worse.   This is challenging!

Strategies attempted so far:  prayer, chiropractic-with-acupuncture, 2 Ibuprofen, Tizanidine HCL (Bad!), Skelaxine, Lemon Balm (tincture and tea from leaves), diaphragmatic breathing, Beam Ray programs (Brain Support, Spine 3, Myelinsheath, Parkinson’s), hydration with pink himalayan salt water, IV fluids in the ER, cranio-sacral chiropractic, and just waiting them out.   If Lyme takes a year to notice significant improvements, then I’m in for a rough one; I’m 5 months into treatment.  Lord have mercy.

And yet I had a sweet evening with my husband anyways.  Steve heated up a few things for dinner and joined me eating our meal from the comfort of our own bed.  Later we watched a sweet Meg Ryan/Walter Mattheau movie I.Q. while my symptoms came and went.  My Stevers is very gracious towards me and I love him dearly!  He takes all this in stride most of the time.  I am truly blessed.   The title of this blog is his way of handing this noxious symptom.  Gotta love a guy like that, eh?

He has made everything beautiful in its time.  Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NKJV)

Saddness is a gateway to healing

Saddness is a gateway to healing.  Today I grieved some more the loss of my father last year.  This memory was triggered while trying to encourage a friend facing the one-year anniversary of the loss of her father by sharing with her Josh Groban’s “To Where You Are.”  Didn’t expect my own tears.  I guess the negative symptoms of this stage of the illness I’m battling have taken their toll.  Too much time alone, too many noxious symptoms, too tight of finances, and not thinking straight either.  I’ll try to remember:

1 John 4:4

New King James Version (NKJV)

You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

My Jesus is greater than the author of this illness and the sorrows of the day.  He understands tears for He also wept when His friend Lazarus died.  More than the death of Lazarus, some say he was grieving our fallen world in which we will live, suffer and die.  We can take heart that He has overcome the world, the sufferring, and death.  He is my Lord and in Him there is victory.  In this I will rest.  In this I will choose to rest.  Maybe next time I’ll look at the camera . . . .

The dog days of recovery . . .

Spring Treats: April 2012

 A couple little things keep me going during the week:  needing to water the garden and taking my dog Elle out for her noon “business.”  Thank you Lord for your creation!  :J

A Leap of Faith

I thank the Lord for His leading when I am tired after treatment and my brain is foggy!  So I went ahead and researched a particular muscle relaxant that I tried over the weekend and decided to take another dose.  The seizure-like tics turned on fully then diminished.  Ahhhh, the sweet relaxation that followed!  Works for me in this moment.  :J

New Hope Beyond Lyme

Writing this blog to keep me sane while navigating the waters of life through and beyond Chronic Lyme Disease.  With my faith in Jesus Christ as my foundation, I seek Him and His will today and always.  He has allowed this challenge in my life for His purpose and I know it will not be wasted.  With that confidence, I write what I have discovered thus far in this journey.

Lord, be my Guide, my hope and my peace.  May I reflect You and Your Will for me.  May others battling serious illness also find hope and peace in the shadow of Your wings.

In Jesus’s name, Just Julie