Helps to laugh!
Tag: sick building syndrome
Spring and Fall
My body will tell you tonight: it’s quite an accomplishment to finish our Spring and Fall yard clean up projects all within 24 hours! Whaaat? Such is life these days. All completed just in time for the long soaking rain storm outside my window as Winter approaches . . . the maiden tulip bulbs are going to be real happy in their new home!
I am exceedingly grateful to be functioning somewhat better despite the ongoing noxious episodes that occur most days. Then there were two noxious-free “holidays” within the past four days. THIS IS HUGE GUYS AND GALS! I haven’t had more than a one-day break per week since living in the hotel at the beginning of the year when we were remediating our home for mold. Looks like the IV magnesium treatments (counted #20 today) and sugar/sweetener-free cholestyramine are beginning to work a wonder inside of me. I am grateful and humbled.
Despite all of this good news for some reason I needed to cry a bit today. This year has been especially traumatic. When I’m in one of those hour-long to several-hour-long episodes my ability to think and reflect is gone. My mind is blank. No processing occurs of what is happening to me. I have heard patients with dementia describe his or her mind this way. There just aren’t any thoughts. Gratefully I do not have dementia. I often wonder, however, if there will be synaptic damage from the almost 2 years of seizure attacks. Then again, maybe the neurons just needed a little Spring cleaning, resetting, and the like. Anyways, I believe that to grieve the loss of my health is, well, healthy. Perhaps it will pave a comprehensive path to healing?
The end of Psalm 139 reads:
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
I have heard an application of this passage that it can describe the need to reflect upon and grieve a past trauma as part of a God-honoring healing process. The Lord knows me and my circumstances in addition to the outcome. By opening my mind and heart to His merciful grace under the shadow of His wings, I will find rest. I have prayed many times to “get” the purpose of all of this suffering and wondered if I was “there yet.” I asked my husband Steve, my God-honoring spiritual leader, if he thought there was anything I was not seeing. Was there some sin or character flaw that required repentance? Steve was gracious when asked these questions. We both saw the little lessons and unexpected blessings that were the “silver lining” to this illness. We have not become embittered. We have drawn even closer together and to Christ. Whew. Thankfully.
Blogging started as online journaling and has become so much more. I do hope that my writing will be used for God’s glory and point people who are going through serious trials, to the person of Jesus Christ. To the Gentle Reader out there, you have also helped me find a plan and a purpose for this time in my life. The process has become as meaningful as the lessons learned. One lesson learned yesterday: don’t leave a wheelbarrow full of mulch out in the yard! Put it under the covered porch. Six times it got rained on and rained in. Geez that was one heavy wheelbarrow!
A little humor helps fer shur. And my Stevers is a great model of the value of silliness in the middle of the crap-o-la-ski. (You were missing my Polish, I know, so here ya go!) Thanks for hanging in there with me. Wish I could hug ya, eh? :J
It is here!
It is here! I am grateful to announce that my new eBook is now available! Simply use the coupon code UR45T for your free copy beginning November 1st at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/371334
The first year enduring and battling a serious illness can test everything we thought we knew about coping with the trials of life. In this ebook, I invite you to share the more meaningful moments of my journey as I seek to draw strength from outside of myself to endure the trials of my particular story. My hope is that you, too, will find strength and hope that transcends your day-to-day experience. I also hope that you will consider the hope found in God though a personal relationship with His Son. His presence in One’s life makes a difference in where a person lands when this particular journey of life is over. Will we have peace or will we have despair?
With a sincere heart, it is my privilege to share my journey with you. Let not these trials of ours be wasted, eh? Gentle Reader, are you ready for enduring hope beyond what we can see? If your answer is, “Yes!” then I invite you to read, Hope Beyond Lyme: The First Year. With extra bonus pages and the most meaningful and encouraging vignettes updated from this blog, may it uplift you, knowing that you are not alone, not today, not ever. :J
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While I would never compare my experiences these past 2 years to the incredible suffering of the apostle Paul of the Bible, I draw encouragement from his words as noted below. My prayer on my most wretched of days was that there would be some greater purpose for this illness, that something meaningful would come from it. I hoped that my writing would not be a rant that went no where. I did not want to end each posting with more anger, hurt, sadness, or negativity than when I began either. My hope is that I would leave you with more good than not-so-good. To encourage others, well, that would be awesome as well as pose a tremendous responsibility to get it right as a matter of stewardship. The Lord gave me a voice and my hope was that I would use it to glorify Him most of all.
If you like what you see here, would you kindly share it with others? The free coupon special won’t last long! And thank you for being with me along this journey thus far. Shall we continue the adventure another year together? Oh I hope so! Take care Gentle Reader, Just Julie
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12 Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. (Philippians)
Good News!
The seizure attacks have diminished from 3-4 per day for up to 4 hours each (and all night long every 10 days) to 1-2 per day. This is huge! Praise the Lord everyone out there! Praise the Lord!
When the time is right
One of the hardest parts about chronic illness for me (longer-duration illness, not permanent, hopefully!) is the change in my relationships. I’ve written previously about the loss of casual friendships, the ones based upon common interests or gathering places. Today I’m talking about the one between a husband and wife.
Steve and I have been married almost 6 years. I call him my “intended beloved” since I believe the Lord has blessed me with an amazing man of God as my life partner. We came together in our late 40’s, having learned much about life, people, and the Lord’s enduring grace in the years before we met. We’d both lost our youngest sibling and the last of our grandparents within the past 10 years, shared both similar and completely opposite interests, had to relocate due to divorce, seen plenty of changes in the world around us, and came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ as adults. Still when we got together we needed to work on a few things as a couple. I believe these things have become our strengths and bonded us together for life. Yes!
Steve and I share the “love language” of caring touch. (For more on the 5 love languages, see the work of Gary Chapman.) Therein the challenge of late lies. The most noxious symptom of Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome for me is seizure-like episodes, 3-4 times per day. Most any sensory stimuli can make a seizure attack worse or even trigger one if it is intense enough. An episode can become worse after it starts if Steve or anyone touches me. So imagine a loving spouse attempting to comfort his or her beloved at a time of severe illness, reaching out and discovering that the gesture actually makes the person worse! And if this happens over an over again, despite the caution, precautions taken to be gentle or vary the type of comfort, the spouse can become discouraged. In our marriage, we have decided to work with the symptomatology and find a firm touch or closeness by proximity that sort of worked for me. Thankfully, Steve did not stop trying altogether. I understand that could have happened.
After all, the worst seizure attacks and convulsions happen late at night. Steve often needs to go to bed to get up for work or another commitment the next morning so he simply cannot stay up with me night after night. Our physical intimacy suffers. Oh and if the attack isn’t so bad and we attempt marital relations, it’s a crap shoot whether or not the noxious symptoms start again. Can you imagine turning something intended to be precious into something so ugly? We often don’t even “go there” if I’m feeling sick or I’m in “pre-tic mode.” The heartache of frustrating my spouse isn’t worth the Russian roulette we must play to see if things are going to work out o.k. Stopping a tender moment also wrecks my thought process; it wrecks “the mood” for me. Steve just says, unbelievably, that he doesn’t mind or that we had a time of closeness anyways. Where do they make guys like him anyways? Certainly I had not seen any in my past . . .
And this is where I must trust the Lord to sustain me, to sustain Steve-and-me through this season of our relationship. I am incredibly blessed to be married to a man who loves me truly, “in sickness and in health.” I did not experience this when I was married before as a young woman. The Lord allowed certain health issues at that time to challenge us, test us, deepen our faith and we both failed to lean on His leading to overcome the trials. In the end, my former spouse turned to another woman for solace and physical intimacy. She was an unlikely comfort: wealthy, mother of 6 children, and spouse of a man about to be imprisoned for embezzlement. Craig left anyways. And what that left me was a fear of relational intimacy or at least of trusting another man to endure the inevitable trials of life.
In the time that followed as a single woman, I turned to my Heavenly Husband for comfort, protection, provision. He was my constant companion and much healing occurred. It wasn’t until a time of serious illness struck 2 years ago and 4 years into my marriage to Steve that I realized a little more recovery was needed. Steve’s steadfastness strengthened by his true relationship with the Lord has never waivered. Never! I am humbled and grateful. I often see in Steve: “Jesus with skin on.” Steve has been wounded by his past and an ex-wife who disrespected him terribly. Regardless, he has rarely brought any vulnerability from that experience to our marriage. He, too, has allowed the Lord to “restore the years the locusts have eaten” (Joel 2:25), rising up to become the spiritual leader God intended. So glad he’s tall too. I love looking up to my Stevers.
When the time is right, when we have submitted ourselves to the refining fire that can be the trials of life, when we are faithful to the calling the Lord lays before us, we too may be rewarded with blessings beyond belief. Those blessings may not be what many think of as gifts or rewards. For me and my beloved, those good things are the ability to overcome the wretched things of life in a way that actually deepens our love relationship together as well as our walk with the Lord. My hope in writing this is that you are also seeking the One who knows your pain and loves you just as you are: the person of Jesus Christ. (Psalm 41:1-3) He may indeed bring you an angel to minister to your needs, a “Jesus with skin on.” He may bring you to the foot of His throne of grace a few times in desperation, alone. I know that He will not frustrate you beyond what you can handle, however, and will fill your heart with unspeakable joy someday. (Romans 5:3-5)
I am grateful to see the latter despite wretched illness. I pray that you too, Gentle Reader, will be able to see all this and more when the time in your life is right. (Ecclesiastes 3) The sorrow will not be wasted, of that I am sure if we but keep our eyes fixed on the face of Christ. We may even get a sweet snuggle with someone special too!
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Addendum: A new medication is bringing new hope. I’m down to about 1 attack per day and they are less intense. We are holding onto hope as this journey of illness appears to be changing. Praise the Lord!!!!
Jesus is for the Wounded 
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