Just a Little Lower than the Angels

The grace of God on my life feels overwhelming as I am putting food in bags to be delivered to the food bank at the end of the day. Cranberry tuna, sweet potato salad,  goat cheese pecan salad, all sorts of delectable treats are donated to the local poor every night. One in eight people in the world are chronically malnourished. I have this abundance of wonderful food all around me. I am well aware that I barely escaped from being on the receiving end of this chain. Instead, I am part of the giving.

It took the store ten years to be able to open in my area. A very strong crony organization with members that have exactly zero education and experience in economy governs local development, or more exactly, the lack thereof, and any changes must be approved by their board. There are towns that are trying to escape its iron clasp. As I watch all the food that will benefit the economically weakest people in town I wonder what this ridiculous board was against? Organic, high quality food for the homeless? Support for local farmers, fishermen, and schools? More year round jobs with the best benefits I have ever heard of? And a job for me…

As I am deciding where to take my life from here it becomes clear that I need to apply to the graduate program where I have been taking classes. God's provision is all around me.

"I have never heard of a graduate math program that would accept someone with no undergrad credits in math!"

An admission counselor at an engineering program is looking up the program that I want to to enter. I am trying to figure out how to get into an engineering school with a degree in liberal arts. She is shocked to learn that yes, the number one qualifier for this particular program is doing well in three of their classes and undergrad degrees don't matter. If I finish my math degree I will be considered for a civil engineering degree. A long road to take. When I get home at midnight I watch online classes on trigonometry and calculus. It will take me years to get where I want to be.

All the way up to my husband's death fear had been the main denominator to all important decisions I had made and I had no idea! In my mind I see myself at eighteen years of age standing in front of the engineering school where my father got his degree. Large glass windows supported by steel columns and clean lines of modern architecture tempt the core of my being. At the same time, just the thought of becoming anything like my father in any area sends me reeling. In the brokenness from the abuse I suffered from him I am not able to separate my feelings from reality. I don't really know who I am. All I know is that I want my life completely different than what it has been. I walk away from the school and end up enrolling in an English and Music teaching program.

I love English. Most people cannot detect my accent even though I did not start learning until I was fourteen (although I am sure that this blog is full of Czenglisms LOL!)

I love music. When I lay my harp on my shoulder and the music resonates through every part of my body I feel like heaven fell. My cherry harp's soft tones sweetly talk to my thoughts. My walnut harp's muted sound comforts and strengthens. My celtic harp's carbon fiber strings encompass the most resonance of them all, caress my soul, and envelope me in beauty head to toe.

But then… I am sitting in a geometry class I have to take for my license. I have been putting about twenty hours of work per week into homework. As I toil on Euclidian proofs and am able to deliver a perfect construction of a heptadecagon I KNOW… nothing has ever challenged me like this before and nothing else has felt so satisfying. Nothing has ever touched this one place inside me that nobody else has been able to understand. This IS me!

"Well, it is really early and there is nobody in student services yet…"

A girl at a switchboard is surprised someone would be calling at 8:30 during summer vacation. Yes, it is early. It is 2:30 am for me and I am trying to get my transcript from a school that is on the other side of the world so that I can apply to a math program. It is early, and it is never too late. My life has fundamentally changed. It does not matter what it takes. I need to keep making the changes that will take me where I need to go.

"You little idiot!" I do have a name Dad, and this is not it!

No Dad, I am not an idiot!

I was made just a little lower than the angels. And crowned with glory and honor. And that's that.

I love this new trail the collision with tick borne diseases and mold set me on. There seems to be healing for every wound I have ever suffered, the crooked is made straight, and the rough places plane. And I am enjoying every second of it!

Emergency

I am thankful to every one of you who has taken the time to read my blog. I have a huge request now. There is a family from Canada at Sponaugle with ten year old quadruplets and all of the children have Lyme disease. I personally met them while I was there. The family has lost their business and home already. It does not get much worse than this. They desperately need your help. Please donate at:

http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/judah-vs-lyme/107787

The Quadrature of the Lune

An itchy red spot on my skin marks the inevitable. I was bitten by a mosquito. I knew that the day would come when I would get bitten again and it happens to be today. The sun is setting and I am standing on the beach watching the show. Neon orange streaks spread all over the sky evenly fading into softer grayish pink hues above my head. Olive greens and browns of beach grasses follow the curvature of dunes and the lone osprey nest raises an upside down exclamation mark against the sky. Rhythmic swishing of ocean waves behind me cradles my soul. As I take in the unfolding spectacle of colors the nature set before me tonight I wonder why life is the way it is. The colors are produced by a reflection of light. In other words, the beam has to break in a certain way in order for me to see the particular color. I had to be broken in a certain way in order to enjoy it the way I do. I soak this harmony of colors and sounds into every pore of my being. This gorgeous beauty and the bite are both part of my life all at the same time.

I have been treating mosquito borne Protomyxzoa with Purify by The Life Tree for over a month now and don't get a Herxheimer reaction anymore. I used to feel air hunger about half an hour after taking the tincture. Mosquitoes in this area can also carry West Nile Virus and I decide to not worry about it. I simply have to take life one thing at a time and not fret about things that have not happened.

My mind along with my eyes wonder along each streak.

"I am here to separate the human side from the business side."

A response I got after I explained at work how ill I was and that I needed more treatment. Two days later there was a letter in the mail telling me that I would be terminated from my job if I failed to report back in longer than five business days. Well, I did not report. I couldn't. I have long learned that other people's actions and responses are not about me. They are about them. Besides, I can never be a teacher again anyways. Schools get closed for the summer without air-conditioning and the humid air just sits there creating mold. I cannot be around mold. Prior to my collapse I did not connect the leaky roof and moldy ceiling, the leaky windows and the mold around them, and the mold behind filing cabinets in one of the classrooms with my ill health. Now I know.

I feel like I don't owe anything to anyone at this job. I did the absolute best I could as I always do. I was the best teacher I possibly could be. I was not perfect, nobody is, but I gave it all I had. I feel like I can emotionally move onto the next stage of my life and leave what happened at my previous job behind me. Somehow I feel the termination has nothing to do with my performance but no need to guess. I must be busy trying to figure out where to go next.

It is week two of my Protomyxzoa treatment. Standing in a line for an interview I wonder how I am going to do this. I have been here for two hours now and am near fainting. How can I possibly hold a job? I get through the interview and don't get hired. I know that right now I cannot work so no harm done. I get hired on a second try a week later. I will be starting at the very bottom at an upscale grocery store. I will be working alongside some of my former students.

Week four into Protomyxzoa treatment I become the salad bar girl. Since I am not a mosquito and I will not be biting people and sucking their blood I feel OK starting this job. Protomyxzoa is not contagious so my conscience is clear about working with food. For everyone's safety I tell my PCP during my visit and he does not see a problem. Onto the salad bar!

The sun that entertains me at the beach plays with colors on "my" salad bar too. When the beams of setting sun light the vegetables the rainbow of colors becomes even more beautiful. I cannot believe I have been able to do this. I run all day and lift heavy tubs full of salads, smile at customers, and with glee go overboard for every need they might have. The store is very generous with samples. I love sharing my thankfulness and love for my new job with everyone I meet. I feel like I can trust all of my bosses, love the products, and find the whole place so exciting! My friends were worried that my sorry little brain would not get enough stimulation at a job like this. Well, I have come to consider this a poorly paid therapy. It is said that exercise detoxes the body. I am a living example of this. Even though I may come with joint pain I leave pain free after the shift. How amazing! The store was just rebuilt so no leaky ceilings or windows here! A perfect place for me.

I have become friends with some of the customers already. The employees are here because they want to. Everybody does their job. Yes there are problems, like there are everywhere. But they seem to be so minor! My recovering brain and nerves need this no-stress-all-fun environment right now. One of the cooks is teaching me her side of the house. She is a painter and taught painting classes at our local college. We talk about painting and art over pots of soup, grilled chicken, and mac and cheese. I ended up getting an A in my last math class I took at a top university. I am able to understand the quadrature of the lune. And at the same time I am having a hard time parking the car between two white lines. Now that I feel physically better my nerve damage has become more apparent. I do have some vision and hearing problems. My sense of space has been affected. I feel like my memory and word recall have slightly improved. All the more this need for paid fun and therapy. Go Red Sox? No! Go salad bar!

The moon helps the street lights find my way to the car when I get out after my shift. My second helpful lune. I know that I am going home to a complete disarray as most of my energy is consumed working. On the home front I basically only put out fires of the greatest emergencies. My two terriers gifted me with stinky pee pads while I was away. I glance over the piles of paperwork, dirty dishes, and clean laundry. As I fall asleep I am thankful for all of this mess. I am thankful that I can worry about having piles of clean laundry. Those are good worries to have.

The Gift of Lyme

A moving pile of rabbit hair that just waits to fall apart is stretching my patience as I stand on my tippy toes in front of the rabbit hutch peeking under a blanket that covers the chicken wire in the door. I saw the mother rabbit pull her hair from her belly to build the nest several days ago. Now the babies have been born and I cannot wait to see them! Instead, all I see is a soft, fuzzy lump in motion that is keeping the baby rabbits warm during freezing early mornings of early March. Every day my grandmother gets up at five o'clock to make hot cocoa for the rabbits. None of us ever understood why she made cocoa for rabbits when they were babies. I know that soon I will be able to see the blind mouselike creatures crawling in their nest and when they are bigger I can hold a baby rabbit in my arms. For now all I can do is quietly watch in order to not disturb the mother and the babies.

"You can live a safe life of a rabbit in a communist rabbit hutch or face the dangers of the American jungle…" A comment made by Milos Forman, an immigrant from the Czech Republic and the director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, referring to a hallmark of communist architecture, large blocks of flats with uniform apartments and uniform lives under the communist regime and the freedom and life one has to fight for here in the US. More now than ever, I am well familiar with the fight. I feel like I have just swam across the ocean. In my thoughts I am lying on the beach, exhausted, spent, and there is this large life right in front of me waiting to be discovered and won. I have had to fight my own body while fighting to get medical care for diseases the government denies exist.

I don't think that I have ever been in a better place in life. I may have a large medical debt. I may not be able to go back to my job as a teacher. But I know that eventually I can be the healthiest I have ever been. I have touched the very bottom of my existence. Today was the first day since August that I did not have to lie down during the day. I feel like I am making small progress every day. I know exactly what is wrong with me. I know what I have to do to improve. I know what I have to do to stay healthy.  There is power in knowledge.

For the first time in my life I will be able to live to my potential. What an unbelievable concept! Three library books in ziploc bags are being heated by the sun in my car. Let's say that libraries don't make it a point to keep their books at 55% humidity... When I opened the first one and the musty smell hit me I knew that if I read it I would contaminate my body with mold. I immediately placed it in a bag and looked on the internet  for mold removal instructions. I chose the car baking and will try a week in the freezer next time. I always thought I hated economics. To my great surprise I am drawn to this remediated volume on microeconomics. It all makes sense to me. Just about who am I? Where am I supposed to go?  What IS my potential? So many paths have opened in front of me and now I have to figure out which one to take. Am I supposed to be an engineer, architect, nutritionist, should I study management? My gut is telling me there is a reason I am getting this degree in Recovering form Tick Borne Diseases! I feel like the depths I reached while at my worst have been placed in me for a reason.

"You have it in you!"

My pastel teacher is so sure I can make money by painting. I am 100% not sure but will follow her advice on this. I don't have that many ways to make money right now. If she thinks that I can make money selling my "art"… I don't know how to draw! I only took one pastel class! How crazy!

Two days ago I sat at the piano for the first time in ten months. Stumbling and stuttering through a piece I played when I was in high school I was ready to call Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Chopin must have been turning in his grave and I wanted to make sure the statue above him did not fall over. One of my small victories. Regardless of the quality (or lack thereof) of my playing I was actually able to do it. My efforts revealed that although much improved there is still slight neuropathy in my left hand. I am reveling in the fact that I am able to pay attention to such nonessentials as piano playing and replacing a broken string on my harp.

How much I enjoy every motion that does not hurt, every thought that can dwell on the beauty of life, every connection I can make with another human being… I think about and pray for the staff at Sponaugle Wellness and Dr. Sponaugle every day. With my life returning back to me in small increments I am so thankful for his courage to be different and to walk the Lyme path with his patients. Reviled and ostracized by their peers, insurance companies, and regulatory agencies Lyme Literate Medical Doctors and any medical professional who dare to treat Lyme patients put their reputation, licenses, and livelihood on the line for people who would otherwise get no help. I know him as an extremely generous and caring man who goes above and beyond for every one of his patients. He fights for their lives in the American jungle of politicking over this terrible, debilitating, and devastating disease. God bless America. And God bless dr. Sponaugle and his staff.

Slowly but Surely

Fuzzy heads of Siberian onion perched on thick stems are resisting gentle swaying of spring ocean breeze while my dogs happily roll in the grass. I am sitting on the ground looking over my azaleas and phlox. Tulips, daffodils, and snow whites have finished blossoming. Popping buds of roses, clematis, and peonies are just about to burst into bloom. Small green berries of black and red currants ache for the sun and gooseberries are getting bigger each day.

The last two weeks have been beyond busy trying to get myself back into a routine. My little dog just arrived home from her trip to cranberry farm. My older dog is finally back to himself after two weeks of profound grief of perceived loss of his little sister. Unable to do anything other than eat and go out to pee without her now he is rubbing against my leg and nudging me to pick up a ball and throw it to him. We are a family again.

Yesterday was my first time back in church. I am so happy to see familiar faces, my church family who has been praying for me while I was away.

I will never regret this trip I have taken. I know exactly what is wrong with me and what I need to do to get better and to stay healthy. I have been taking Cholestyramine for black mold exposure. Last week I started Purify by The Life Tree for Protomyxzoa. I feel like I get a little better every day. I was told at Sponaugle that I would need three more months of treatments at the clinic to remove all toxins, break down biofilm, and kill all the pathogens. I need to go back in six months so that they can keep prescribing medication to me.

Right now my future is one big question mark. My last paycheck is in two weeks. I don't know how I will support myself after that. Somehow I am at peace with it and have been able to take one day at a time. I need extensive therapy and supplements neither of which are covered by insurance. Somehow I am fine with the uncertainty of my circumstances. I have done nothing to cause this. I cannot do anything right now to make it better. I am facing a fate that many Lyme patients have experienced. I know that I am on the way up. How long this is going to take and if I can ever make a full recovery is to be seen.

There are symptoms that have completely disappeared. I am able to jump on my rebounder, I am less light and sound sensitive. I am less emotional. I have way less pain and fatigue. Overall there is a lot of improvement.

I traded in my FJ Cruiser for a Prius. It is a perfect car for me and I am totally in love with it! The most practical and economical car I have ever owned, I feel like I am back to myself after the loss of my husband. Somehow after his death I needed the safety of the huge frame of the FJ. Prius, cleverly designed, 50 mpg, and thought through to the smallest details, embodies my philosophy of life. The car feels like an external sign of my healed grief.

I never thought I would publicly admit to doing things like colonics but it is the single most important therapy I have ever done for my health so I am willing to share. I have a colonic twice each week and now I have added ionic foot baths. The relief of symptoms I experience after each session is amazing. Sometimes I feel like I am near healed for several hours. Both colonics and foot baths remove toxins from the body. Any progress I have experienced started after I incorporated colonics into my detox regime. I will continue, with lesser frequency, for the rest of my life.

It is my intent to keep this blog going. I may not write frequently but so many people are desperate, facing this debilitating disease, and looking for answers. I took the chance and flew to Florida without knowing anyone who actually went to Sponaugle. I found excellent care, compassionate nurses, and an understanding doctor. I want others to have a reference point and to know how I am progressing and what I am doing to keep getting better and staying well. Time for Cholestyramine, see you next time!

Black Death No.2

As much as I love to paint with words now I have not been able to write because my mind has been overwhelmed with toxins that were released during the kill IVs.

"Your body is killing on its own and I don't like you going home like this. I am worried you will not be able to detox quickly enough to remove the toxins the kill is producing!"

Dr. Sponaugle is not excited I am leaving. Neither am I. I know that there is a cure and I am not able to get it because of the cost. How disheartening! Five years ago my insurance would have covered 80% of the bill. Now they cover nothing. With the political changes that have been happening insurance covers less and less. I need three more months of treatment.

I am much more ill than anyone thought. Genetically predisposed to not be able to remove mold toxins my labs run almost twelve times the limit. Compared to other patient my toxicity is a walk in the park. Some patients' black mold levels are one, two, or even three hundred times greater than what they should be. Recently I started taking Cholestyramine and immediately noticed a difference. I am not well. But I am better. Any improvement counts.

On my way home my eyes skip over the dark spotty vents up in the ceiling of Tampa International Airport. I notice moldy dots on a canopy that leans against the plane as I enter. I wonder what is in the recycled air of the plane I am on. All of a sudden the world has become hostile and all I have to protect myself from it is a bottle of liposomal glutathione.

Landscape checkered with carmine stained glass windows of cranberry bogs announces we are nearing Massachusetts. My little dog is staying at one of the farms while I am getting my treatment. I may not be able to keep her. I may have to surrender her to a rescue. There are many changes ahead.

"I have to figure all of this out!"

"But you can't!"

One of my fellow patients mercifully brings my mind back to earth. I wrote these words with a lipstick on my mirror. I can't figure it out. Every day brings major changes and what was one way yesterday is completely different today. My type A personality is taking a beating and I hope that I am once and for all cured from planning and fretting over what I cannot figure out.  All I can do now is take the next step and wait how it all shakes out.

My car has just puttered through five light changes right next to Charles River in early evening Boston traffic. I got a good look at college kids practicing their rowing skills. "WHO IS MAN THAT YOU ARE MINDFUL OF HIM?" An inscription on the front of the building where I am supposed to take my final. I wonder if other people read this too or if the voice of God has become just another prop in the hustle and bustle of the city. Once inside I can feel the musty air coming from the air-conditioning vents. I need to be quick. This building was built in 1908 and there is filth inside the vents that can seriously hurt me. The exam is supposed to take two hours. Thirty minutes into it my mind is shutting down already with the dirty air circulating throughout the room. I hand my exam in after one hour.  I only did the absolute minimum to get a 90 and no extra credit. I run out of the building. Once in my car I start sobbing uncontrollably. Does this mean that I will not be able to finish my degree? Though online my program has four on-campus classes requirement. The entire campus is over a hundred years old.

I have learned to observe my emotions from a distance and understand that they are largely affected by mold and toxicity. There is something inside me that never allows me to give up. That something rises without fail every time I need to fight for myself or others. Like now. I observe this something that simply refuses to give up on me, my life, and my dreams. I realize I can finish. Even if I have to wear a HAZMAT suit and a respirator to every class. I can finish. I can ask to get an exemption due to health reasons. Where there is a will there is a way.  Every day presents a new set of twists an turns and nothing is set in stone.

Thursday my house passes mold inspection with almost an A+. Some very minor non toxic mold in air conditioners. The rest of the house is mold free. I breathe a sigh of relief. I am safe in my home. The inspector agrees to look at the church. The church is completely mold free. There are two buildings I am safe in. My house and my church.

The car dealership is raking me over the coals. I have to trade my car in and get something cheaper and more economical. After my husband's death I needed a bandaid bigger than a box of chocolates so I got this big, bad, and beautiful Toyota FJ Cruiser. I needed the car. I felt safe in it. It was faithful in rain, sleet, and all the snow storms we have had. Now it's time to part with it. I am tired and don't have the strength to argue with the sales rep. I end up leaving because I know that what they are offering is not a good deal. Will try somewhere else on Monday.

Time for more Cholestyramine. My schedule of supplements and medications has become very regimented now that five of them cannot be taken with anything else. I basically take medications all day.  The reward is six hours on uninterrupted sleep for the first time in years. I will do anything to avoid black death No.2 and its consequences. To be continued tomorrow!

Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

The doctor and his nurse are examining my latest labs. It is clear that I am much sicker than anyone had suspected. Toxin markers have been getting worse each week meaning more and more toxins have been pulled out of my brain and my nerves. My treatment will take longer than I thought and I have to go back home and take out a substantial loan so that I can finish. It will take my nerves six to twelve months to heal once all the toxins are gone.

"Let's start a double kill today"

I asked for an aggressive protocol again and I got it. Single, double, and triple "kills"  break up the biofilm releasing mycotoxins, neurotoxins, heavy metals, and microbes that have found a hiding place in the goo. More and more toxins escape into my blood stream and my brain is trying to stay afloat in this toxic soup. I was warned about this but it is part of the cycle so I don't complain. Detox drips and colonics help with removing the mess.

When I arrived here at Sponaugle I began to be able to write for the first time since last August. With the kill releasing all the toxins my brain is down in the dumps again and I am just surviving in bed. It's not terrible, I just feel unwell and all I want is to stay in bed and not have to do anything. There is the Salvador Dali museum, Cape Canaveral, Bush Gardens, Epcot, and other attractions within driving distance but I am simply not able to pull myself together to manage a trip like that. Reading, watching TV, or listening to music have no draw on me. Right now I just want to exist as comfortably as possible.

Saturday night my friend takes me to a beach in Clearwater. For several hours, I have a clear mind and enough strength to manage a short walk. An endless stretch of fine sand like I know from Italy softly glows in the sunset. We quickly take pictures as the sun changes shape and color while the Earth is turning away from this wonderful, magic, glowing ball of burning gasses. As the rays bend in the atmosphere the sun looks like it's overflowing into the ocean and pouring out somewhere beyond the horizon. Then, quickly, it is gone! People clap and a bell clangs commemorating this important event. I allow myself to immerse in the wonder and beauty of this spectacle. I need to use these several hours of semi normalcy to give my overburdened mind much needed rest. I choose to not think about my symptoms and simply exist for right now. All of my senses are on alert for the performance that nature prepared for this evening. Parrots are trying to solve their domestic disputes over our heads. My friend and I share our joys and sorrows. Clusters of people around us hum with conversations and the wind carries over whiffs of cigarette smoke.

I have improved a lot since last August but I still have long ways to go. Toxins need to be pulled out of my nerves and removed from my body, biofilm broken up, microbes killed, all the while my malfunctioning immune systems tries to rally and fight on its own. My hormones need to even out. My gut must heal so that it can properly absorb all the nutrients I am trying to give it.

In my initial email to Sponaugle I included following symptoms:

Low energy and no stamina, overall exhaustion, choking, losing my voice, hoarse voice,  difficulty swallowing (food and medication gets stuck in my throat), terrible nausea- more like a feeling like I am drowning without the pulmonary distress, vision problems-seeing black spots fly by in my peripheral vision, also unable to read 1/4" print- this comes and goes, hearing- unable to distinguish what people are saying, this also comes and goes, sensitivity to sound. Terrible night sweats, brain fog, memory loss, word retrieval issues. I am a teacher, I have not been able to remember about 20% of my students' names, if I meet them in a hall or outside of school I cannot remember their name and if I teach them or not. If the kids dramatically change their haircut (happens quite frequently with teenagers) I am not able to remember the student's name. Making frequent mistakes on the board (not on paper), cannot remember students who graduated. My muscles are like jello and I have lost 12 lbs. Food allergies- almonds, nutritional yeast, candida, etc, environmental allergies- smoke, perfumes, diesel fumes etc. My gums have recessed about 1/8". Joint pain, muscle pain, neuropathy in left hand, neck and shoulder pain and stiffness, having a hard time walking due to pain and cannot exercise, loss of balance every now and then. My hips and knees are giving up under me. Tingling and numbness in my face, hands, and legs. Change in taste- every now and then when I eat chicken it tastes like metal. My hair is falling out and I feel like I am 100 years old. Terrible sleep disruptions, last night got 2 hours of sleep. I am also very emotionally sensitive and easily irritated by small things and that is not my usual self. I am not able to watch any movies because any drama makes me cry. I am unable to watch or read about other people's suffering without crying. My handwriting is atrocious. My heart feels like I drank a gallon of coffee. I have had several episodes of irregular heartbeat. If I don't take major amount of probiotic I have terrible GI problems, even with the probiotic I feel like there is yeast in my stomach. My liver and my spleen hurt, I am assuming it's from all the antibiotics I have been on. 

Current symptoms, severity is for the most part much reduced:

Names still present a major challenge for me. Brain fog, memory loss, word retrieval issues, fatigue, joint pain, muscle stiffness and occasional pain, food and environmental allergies, still some neuropathy in left hand, occasional tingling in hands, occasional air hunger, hair loss, sleep disruptions (about 3-4 hours of sleep per night), GI problems. Emotionally sensitive on occasion. Occasional night sweats.

This is a good list to make for myself. When I was so horribly ill in the fall I thought of documenting my progress but I was so overwhelmed with the disease that I was not able to write anything. I am in a much better place now. Thank God!

The Truth Shall Set You Free

A bouncy three-year-old happily skips around the classroom as his mother and I watch. All of a sudden he stops, looks at  me, and says my name. I fight tears with everything that is in me. I have poured my whole heart into this boy. He knows about twenty words and my name is one of them!

I tickle him and then I stop to make him say "more".  I throw him up in the air while he squeals with joy and then I stop to elicit a "yes". I have worked with him on colors, sitting at the table, putting his coat on… We all have, there are several of us and every day we painstakingly and patiently try to teach skills that typical children pick up with ease.

"When you are here I know that I don't have to worry. You are like his second mother…"

An honor I do not feel worthy of and words I hold onto for the rest of my life. Her son nonverbal and severely autistic, this mother sends her prayers with him to school every day. She has to trust us that we will do the best we can and treat him well. He can never tell her what happened that day.

I see myself standing on a hill overlooking our garden and an orchard filled with fruit trees.  Tiny green apples have just carelessly thrown their pinkish attire into the air and are now shamelessly bathing in the sun's rays. A whirl of falling blossoms fills the air as the wind chases them among the trees.

"You need to be careful!"

My mother leans down and looks at my bleeding face. I saw her coming from work, ran to her as fast as I could, and… thump! My clumsy five years old legs tripped. I don't know how her embrace feels. Hugging isn't something that's done in my family. I have never heard my parents say "I love you" to each other or to my sister and I. Many years later I try to explain my Christianity.

"Dad, you know how the Bible says, love is patient, love is kind, that is all I want!"

"You are worse than a whore!"

Love is not easily angered… In a reflex I put my hands over my head and try to protect myself from what usually comes next. Filled with a profound feeling of loneliness and not belonging I promise myself to never have a life like my family's.

Now I am sitting here with my little student. Somehow, I have been able to get across to him that I love him and that I care. "You are like his second mother…" unknowingly, this woman assuages a dreadful fear I have carried inside me all of my life. Do I have the ability to love people? Will they ever understand  I love them? Am I ever going to make a difference? Somehow, I finally feel like I was able to jump off my family's merry-go-round.

The car windows are down as my friend and I are talking. She briefly stopped by to check on me. All of a sudden, her son in the back seat stretches out his hand towards me . This profoundly disabled twenty year old is trying to say "hi". As I hold his hand I wonder if he remembers how I used to carry him on my back when he was little and how we would sit at Dunkin Donuts with his favorite cookie on Sundays so that he could people watch.

The most important people are those who speak the truth. The truth shall set you free. Too disabled to do otherwise these two boys can only speak the truth.  They are the most important people in my universe.

One Winged Angel

Maybe I am becoming an angel. I am trying to slowly flap my right arm covered with a polyvinyl chloride wound protector. I earned a wing!

"You have very small veins…" Black, gray, and white shadows chase each other on a screen as the IV tech examines my arm with an ultrasound before inserting the needle.

I have never learned so many things about myself in my entire life! A large mirror right in front of me reflects my image with cruel accuracy.

"Either your liver or your kidneys are not working well." My new primary care doctor is alarmed by my acne. The spots resemble some kind of an African wildlife. He inquires about my diet and my medications.

"Your skin is taking over for either your kidneys or your liver. That is where the acne is coming from." I chose my new doctor because he studied at the Paracelsus Institute in Switzerland.

"You are completely missing one of the liver enzymes" Dr. Sponaugle knows exactly what to test for. So that's the reason why I am leery of entering stores for fear they will call animal control to remove the leopard in isle seven! A leopard with a wing!

Wednesday is my meeting with my nurse. The news is not good. The toxin level is so high it has brought my hormones to rock bottom. If my progesterone falls any lower my body will not be able to repair damaged myelin. I have to get three prescription medications. This means the treatment will be much longer than anticipated. The nurse is concerned and schedules an appointment with Dr. Sponaugle for next week. After much consideration I postpone any decisions I need to make until I talk to the doctor.

Wednesday night I enjoy a brief moment of clarity. As I am falling asleep I am able to determine in my head that 787 is not divisible by any prime number up to 53. I choose to test my awakening braincells on 787 because I have the feeling the number itself is a prime (The next day I do a search online which confirms my hunch. Time for a party!). Thursday morning my brain refuses to cooperate again but the small timeframe of tangible progress keeps me going. My reaction to the IV is much more manageable although still very toxic.

With the prognosis I wonder what is going to happen with me. I have a PhD in Life and a PhD in Being a Wife. I am working on my second Master's degree. I am broke, sick, and my hair is falling out. There is something wrong with this picture! I can't help but wonder what God has in store for His one PVC winged angel...

Broken Robot with Fishnet Stockings

Fishnet stockings is the last thing I expected to get out of this ordeal. The only problem is they are not on my legs and I am not at a bar with my high heels on (not like I ever go to bars but the song sort of fits the situation!). The woozy feeling comes from an anesthetic and the white fishnet mesh covers my new midline.

"If you come back with these on your feet we have a problem!"

I have to laugh at the IV tech's jokes. Under the cover of my skin my veins have been playing hide-and-seek with IV needles that have missed them one too many times. After three nurses tried five times to insert an IV needle last Thursday I was asked to get a PICC line.  Something in me fears a foreign object right next to my heart.  I chicken out and ask for a midline. Local anesthesia knocks me for a loop which takes seven hours in bed to untangle.

In an effort to wake up my brain I slowly meander to the hotel lobby. Talking to someone will surely help my anesthetic stupor. As I pour hot water over herbal tea a woman in her early thirties approaches. Soon I find out she has come from California to hear Dr. Sponaugle's biweekly lecture to make sure this is the right place for her. She has seen a number of the big name LLMDs with no success. She lost her job due to Lyme three years ago and has been ill her whole life. I hold the "You look great!" The beauty of her face perfectly matches her soft manners and posture. I know the theatrics I go through every day pretending I am well and she has done the same. We have to get through this somehow.

I share my milestones with her. Restful weekend brought much needed relief from the side effects of my IV medications. Last night I was able to read a page in a book and not lose my train of thought for the first time since August. Long awaited progress I hang onto with all of my strength. As I start another week of Alpha Lipoic Acid IVs I know I will not feel well from all the toxins circulating in my body but I am looking forward to the process.

After much tossing and turning I finally find a position that gives me couple hours of sleep. Resting on my left side and hugging a pillow with my right hand somehow makes the midline tolerable.

As the raindrops in a shower run down my body I decide that today everybody will have to deal with the fact that I am half dirty.  The wound protector from Walgreens is doing a great job protecting and it is also making me feel like a lopsided robot with a broken motherboard. My interrupted braincells, further slowed down by a sleepless night, are not catching up with the restrictions my midline is placing on my body. Today wet equals clean, tomorrow is another day.

I am struggling already and I have not even had my IV. My tingling and numb hands remind me the medication is working. Even though my oxygen is 99 I feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest. The air hunger is so bad that I have to walk around. Toxins are partying hard. They are joined by more gunk the IV is pushing out of my nervous system. Another patient gives me a ride to the lab and then to the hotel. My bed is the only suitable place for me right now. Around 7pm I am finally able to get up and slowly start getting around. Soon I am ready for bed again. I pull up the fishnet stocking on my right arm to keep my midline safe while I sleep. Hoping for a better night my eyes close with visions of my liver and my kidneys mopping up the toxin mess splattered all over my veins. Tomorrow is another day.

Till Death Do Us Part

"Police, fire, or ambulance?"

"Ambulance"

It is Monday afternoon and I walked through the door only to find you bleeding so profusely that blood is coming out of both your nose and mouth. It clogs your cannula making it impossible for you to get the oxygen you so desperately need. I quickly find a touch free cannula I special ordered to prevent sores in your nose. As you gasp for air at least there is a chance of some oxygen getting into your weak lungs.

"It is just a nosebleed but considering his history we will keep him overnight."

Luckily, a doctor who knows you is on and decides for a hospital stay. Others would have just sent you home. Back at home I find your pajamas, your favorite hair brush that does not hurt the fine skin on your head, your toothbrush, your Bible, and other essentials. The hospital bag we have just for these occasions is waiting for me at the door. Part of our regular hospital routine. The dogs anxiously ask for their dinner and whine at the door for a potty trip.

"We are moving your husband to the ICU, he started bleeding again and we are waiting for a surgeon to cauterize the vein."

"I will be right there."

My car's engine must be wondering why it suddenly feels like Indianapolis 500.

"Am I dying?"

"Of course you are not dying. This is just a nose bleed. I would never tell you that if it was not true. You know I never lie to you!"

"Thank you for being my wife. You were the best wife I could have ever had!"

I laugh nervously as my husband thanks every single person around his hospital bed for taking care of him and brush it off as an effect of one hundred percent oxygen.

"Before you cauterize the vein can you give him a little bit of Ativan?"

I know that he is not able to go through this without some sort of a sedative.

"Have you been in the military?" My husband anxiously asks a young male nurse who is taking care of him.

"No, I haven't."

"I order you to serve the Lord!" Sitting up hysterically in his bed he leans back and drifts off to sleep as he is administered minimum dosage of Ativan.

The phone rings. I am trying to get my thoughts together. Woken up in the middle of the night after two hours of sleep I am trying to make out what is happening.

"We need to intubate..."

"If you intubate he will be on a ventilator for the rest of his life."

"If we do not intubate your husband will die!"

"Go ahead and intubate. I will be there is ten minutes."

I arrive right after the doctor leaves. One hundred percent oxygen and a high CO2 level. The nurse tries to tell me everything is looking well. Unfortunately, being married to someone with a pulmonary condition I have learned a lot over the years. I wish I did not know what those numbers mean.

"You need to go to sleep. There is nothing you can do here."

The nurse is right. It is 3am.

I am back at the hospital on Tuesday morning. By Tuesday afternoon exhaustion sets in.

"Do you know what is happening?"

"Yes, he is on hundred percent oxygen, his O2 is eighty and his CO2 level is over a hundred. He is dying."

"How long do you want to keep him alive?"

I just handed the nurse your living will. No heroic measures to prolong your life. The truth is, your whole life has been a heroic measure!

"Till Thursday when my parents arrive so that they can see him one more time." The nurse thinks that that is reasonable.

Wednesday I am lucky enough to catch the doctor as he is making his rounds.

"He has a kidney failure. When he gets better…"

"He is not getting better, this is it! We are done! He does not have enough strength to pull through a kidney failure!" Startled by my perception of reality the doctor is trying to keep his composure. He has seen you make it a million times.

"I guess you are right. Yes. You are ahead of me. You are right."

I call all of your friends to come and see you one more time.

"It is OK if you want to go. I will be OK. I will make it!"

I don't know if you can hear me. You went into a coma yesterday. I need to say these words for myself. I need you to know that you don't have to suffer anymore and that you don't have to worry about me.

Thursday morning comes around. First I wish I never came. Then I realize I need to see you lifeless with your oxygen hovering around sixty. I am the one who decides when you get disconnected from life support. I could never do that without knowing there were absolutely no chances of you making it. What an evil honor for a wife! Every now and then the monitor shows only stars. Did it just happen?!? Did you just die?!? As you fought misery all your life you fight death even now. The numbers come back every time.

"You should go home and rest. There is nothing you can do here." I know the nurse is right. I have to pick up my parents at the airport later in the afternoon.

"My parents did not arrive on this flight. My husband is in the ICU waiting to be disconnected from life support. Can you please tell me what happened to my parents?" I am pleading with the immigration officer.

"I am not supposed to tell you but considering the circumstances I will make an exception… Your parents were not on this flight. Call the airline and see what happened."

"The flight from Prague was late to Amsterdam and your parents were rerouted to Chicago. They will be arriving to Boston at midnight." I cannot believe my ears. My coworker and friend is giving me a ride. I don't have the strength to drive. I have to be back at the airport at midnight. I place a call to the ICU.

"Please disconnect my husband from life support. My parents did not arrive. No, I do not want to be there." I do not want to see you die. I have seen enough. There have been one too many near death experiences you and I have been through. I do not want to live with the horrid memory of your dead body in the cold, rigid, impersonal intensive care unit. Fifteen minutes later I get a phone call from my father-in-law.

"He just passed away," As difficult as it is I am thankful for the news. You did not struggle and that makes it so much easier on me! The grayish black skyline of Boston behind me witnesses the sun softly set both on me and on your life.

"You are worried that he will die. He will live because now he has you!" An advice given to me as a newlywed. You made it thirteen and a half years. Much longer than anyone thought you would. Good and bad. Very good and very bad. Happiness and pain. Real happiness and a lot of very real pain. For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death did us part.

I gave it all I could. One day I will see you in heaven.

Rest in peace.

June 2011

Free Fall without a Parachute

Though faint, the light across the railroad tracks blinds my eyes even more than the blackness of the night. Gentle wind muffles my steps as I briskly walk by memory on this road I have traveled since childhood. I cannot see anything around me. If there is anyone else here I will run right into them. The chill of an Indian summer night in early September sends shivers through my body that is already shaking with a mixture of fear, exhaustion, and excitement. I feel like I am about to jump out of a plane without a parachute praying for God to catch me.

Hiding in the shadows I approach the lighted intersection. Look left…look right... no one around... I dash through the light into the safety of darkness. Veering off my regular course I choose a path where I am least likely to meet my father. On Saturdays he is always somewhere in a pub. Today I wish I knew which one. If I meet him my plan will fail. He is stronger than I am.

As I run past my high school classmate's home I mouth a silent goodbye. I don't know if I will ever see any of them again. My feet carefully trace the uneven surface of the cobbled road. I allow myself a rest before I set out on the most dangerous part of my journey, a street that leads to the train station. My heart is beating as I am in full light making my way to the ticket counter. One way ticket to Prague. That will be twelve crowns. I hand over the money, grab my ticket, and walk outside as far away from everyone as I can. It seems like time has stood still. In what feels like eternity the train lights finally appear in the distance. As I mount the narrow stairs of the train car I feel a soft pressure of a pouch on my chest. In it a plane ticket and a passport with a freshly stamped visa for entry to the United States. My ticket to freedom.

This is the most dangerous train of the week. Last train to Prague on Saturday night. As every bar and dance club closes all the drunks pile into this train to take them home. Fights are common and people get hurt. Things have gotten so bad that a police patrol had to be placed on this train. As the door opens I sigh in relief. Happily resting right next to his handler, a Czech Shepherd's tongue hangs out of his mouth as he rubs his head on his master's leg. This time a canine patrol watches over the train. I immediately claim the compartment right next to them. I feel like God has placed them right there for my protection. The whistle blows and the train jerks back and forth as the locomotive begins to pull the mass of steel. I pretend to look out the window into the pitch black night so that no one can see the tears  running down my cheeks.

"You cannot do this to us!" My mother is having a nervous breakdown in a patch of cucumbers. I made the mistake of telling my family I was leaving for the US. I was the type of a kid who always had her homework and was on an honor roll. I worked hard and played by the rules. Now I am breaking every single one of them. I tried to be independent. I finished school and taught at a high school in Prague. I had nowhere to live so the principal let me stay in the teachers' room. Every morning I had to pack everything up and make it look like nothing ever happened. In a way I had everything going for me. I knew enough English to have almost any job I wanted. I was promised an apartment from the town right in the center of Prague. I let it all go for this trip I am making.

"You will vote for whomever I tell you to or you are not my daughter anymore!" I am twenty four years old.

"I will vote for whomever I want to!" My whole body is shaking. Fights like this never end well.

"You have two hours to move out! Consider yourself disowned!"

My meager belongings piled in a wheelbarrow I unload everything at my grandmother's doorstep. I am moved out in two hours, my books, my clothes, and my bicycle. I spend the following year painting, cleaning, and upgrading my grandmother's home.

"Did you see how your father spoke to you? He didn't have any respect for you and did not even look at you." I am sitting in a psychiatrist's office, speechless. Upon learning about my trip my father scheduled an emergency appointment in Bohnice, the largest inpatient mental health hospital in Prague. Now the psychiatrist is on my side? Is this for real?

"Your daughter is twenty five years old. She is highly functional and makes rational decisions. She has finished her schooling and has been supporting herself. She has the right to go wherever she wants and do whatever she wants. If she wants to leave for the United States, there is nothing you can do about that." Am I dreaming?

(Ten years later I am sitting at my computer in America reading the Czech paper as I do every day. An article catches my eye. The name sounds familiar. My psychiatrist, my strength and support in the most unlikely place! I learn that during communism he was an underground pastor in the mental hospital. God, you are with me!)

The following four days are spent with my family trying to break me and persuade me to stay. Eventually I am burning up with fever from the pressure. On Friday I lie and say that I am going to Prague to return my ticket. Instead, I pack a suitcase and drop it off at my friend's house. She promises to help me get to the airport on Saturday night. Saturday goes by fairly peacefully even thought I am shaking inside all day. I know what is to come next.

Now I am sitting on the train crying with exhaustion. I want to be free. I want to be loved, respected, and cared for. So I am running. I am running to my freedom.

The cold fake leather of the back seat in a taxi does not help my exhaustion. When I arrive at my friend's house I am in serious need of some TLC. She helps me repack my suitcase. Without any order my things are completely squished as I hurriedly tossed them in. She makes me tea and gives me some soup. How desperately I need the warmth of a homemade meal! The time passes and another taxi takes me to the airport.

"We wanted to say goodbye to you. Why did you not wait for us?" Yea right! First Sunday morning flight out of Prague carries me to Amsterdam and then to Boston. My family is trying to catch me and prevent me from leaving. They arrive just in time for the second flight and in vain alarm the entire airport.

"God I don't care if I live in a dumpster. I am not going back." I talk to God a lot. He is the only one I have right now. The people who were supposed to pick me up are not there. I am sitting on my suitcase at Logan International Airport alone, trying to figure out how I am going to survive on the thousand dollars I have. The year is 1996.

"God I don't care if I live in a dumpster. I am going to finish my treatment." I talk to God a lot. I have Him, my church family, some extended family, my friends, and my Lyme community. I am sitting at a lobby of a hotel in Florida with a group of fellow patients, all of us trying to figure out how we are going to live from now on. The year is 2014.

I jumped out of the imaginary plane without a parachute again. For some reason I am not shaking this time.

God will catch me.

How,when, and where, I don't know.

I just know He will.

______________________________________________________________________

Although I have been advised by some counselors to completely interrupt contact with my family I never felt it was right and have stayed in touch with them over the years. Our relationship is not ideal but at this time it is the best it has ever been. I am very thankful to my father for giving me a substantial amount of money to help me with my out-of-control medical bills.

Oh, the Amish and the Communists

Beep…beep…beep… The thermometer just finished measuring my temperature. Now I have to turn the light on and record the number on a sheet. The time is 4:10 am. After getting three hours of sleep, I don't  really feel like having my tired eyes blasted with bright light. I make myself do it, fall back into my warm, snuggly bed, and pull the sheets over my head. It is Wednesday. I stubbornly declared Saturday my official day off and I am NOT measuring my temperature and getting up at all hours just to get the silly number! I crossed off all Saturdays with a fat neon orange highlighter. It may seem like such a little thing, but I do need a break from the rigor of treatments and schedules I have to keep.

My body is overloaded with toxins and acting like it. Because of active neurological symptoms I am not allowed to start a kill protocol next week. I decide I am just going to go with the flow. One of the patients has only done detox for eleven weeks and somewhere in the middle his body started fighting and killing pathogens. It was able to break the biofilm down on its own. He is being discharged without having to go through one single kill cycle. How different we all are and how differently we react to treatment! I am praying that my body would do the same. If a seventy-seven year old can do it, so can I. My own immune system is shut down and overloaded with toxins. The more my body can clear, the greater the chance it will start fighting. I am having a hard time walking again and feel like a need a personal assistant just to get around. But that's OK. Toxins are being pushed out of places where they cause damage and that's what matters. I can live with the misery knowing it is a "good" one! At least I am still able to walk albeit slowly. Many of the patients here can't, like my new Amish friend's husband.

The other day we got a ride to a vegetable stand. After our baskets are full and paid for we wait outside for our ride and talk. We have a lot in common. I am frequently asked if I am Amish. I usually reply "No, even worse, I live in a cave." When I was little, my father defiantly declared that the TV was full of communist lies and that there was nothing on it worth seeing. With only two channels to lose, we were not devastated. They started broadcasting at 8 am and usually ended somewhere around midnight with next to nothing to view. Instead my sister and I took care of our vegetable garden, flowers, chickens, rabbits, and other animals. We tried just about every craft we could find supplies for. As a result I have never gotten a TV. There is too much to do without it! I tried to recreate as much of my garden as I could by planting black currant, red currant, yosta berry, and gooseberry in my back yard. A blueberry bush graces the side of my patio, its branches loaded with berries in late June and early July.

I tell my friend about the garden plot I rent at a community garden right down the street. "We take care of a large garden and a small garden." she shares. By "we" she means she works the soil and cares for the plants while her wheelchair-bound husband watches. I am way too familiar with the scenario.

"Do you need a protractor?"

My husband is making fun of my ridiculously straight lines and right angles that I, the recovering perfectionist, created with a shovel and a rake in freshly tilled soil. He is watching me from the car. There is no way he can help with any of the digging. I try to create opportunities for him to participate. When the plants are growing he will be able to water with a hose and pick whatever ripened.

"I got some peanuts for the squirrels. We go and feed the squirrels that live in the tall tree."

My Amish friend doesn't share that she has to help her husband get dressed, lift him in a wheelchair, and then she can take him outside to see the furry critters. While others may just gloss over the sentence, I understand what the "we go" really means. I lived it and she knows it.  I don't have the heart to tell her that squirrels have flees which carry Bartonella, a tick borne disease. The two need the little things that they can do together. I think back to when I would come home from work and my husband would be anxiously waiting for me. I would take him to see baby goats and sheep at a local farm. Armed with his binoculars he would watch ospreys build their nest and raise their young. On the beach we would sit and look at tiny crabs poke out of their holes while swinging their toy-like claws when the tide was down. When he couldn't walk anymore I planted basil in a pot right in front of the door.

"Thank you for planting the basil. I watch the bees during the day when you are gone."

Two men in their early forties clinging to life while restrained in so many ways. All four of us had to learn to chose to see the beauty of creation and go on in hope while being incessantly pummeled by pain and suffering. To me the weakest people are the most important people. When I am weak I am strong. How crazy that my Amish friend and I meet here in sunny Florida!

Detox, baby, detox!

The sky is painted with clouds in different layers of the atmosphere. I remember my eleventh grade geography lesson about clouds like it was yesterday. I like to revel in old experiences now that my short term memory is next to nonexistent. Seagulls are flying low and diving onto a pile of French fries someone dropped in the parking lot.  Mr. Tight-Pants-Tight-Shirt is entertaining two girls in minuscule bikinis pierced and tattooed in just the right places. The girls swim around and enjoy warm turquoise pool water, carefree and happy. Just like me, thirty five to forty percent of population is unable to remove heavy metals from their system. Yet there are all these people covering themselves with tattoos, injecting toxins into their bodies, and willingly paying an arm and a leg for a lifetime of heavy metal misery. Why?

"Listening to you makes me want to start drinking!" my friend texts after I tell her about the results of my latest blood test. I inform her that people who have intestinal yeast infection produce enough alcohol in their blood to get an OUI if pulled over. She is in disbelief. So was I when I first heard that. I am completely alcohol intolerant and cannot handle even a half a glass of wine. I will never drink wine regardless. Most of it has high mold content and there are people who actually got toxic mold exposure from wine. Something I need like I need another hole in the head. As far as alcohol, I have drank a total of about one bottle of wine combined in my entire life. I have never smoked or done drugs. Nobody ever believes me except the doctors and nurses who have just seen my lab results. At least now I have it black-on-white. If I did, I think it would have killed me a long time ago.

The latest treatment is pulling toxins out of my brain and my nervous system. Some of my symptoms return as more toxins enter the blood stream. My nightmares are worth Freddy Krueger and my joints ache like no tomorrow. Tuesday is a lab day at Sponaugle and I will find out the results at my next appointment with my nurse. It gets worse before it gets better…

Steam is rising from a pot full of chicken pieces. Another patient went shopping and asked if I needed anything.  I gave her money for chicken and now my dinner is cooking on the stove. I am looking around the kitchen generously equipped to help the patients survive months of hotel accommodations. Stove, fridge, freezer, pots and pans, utensils, sharp knives, cutting boards, saran wrap, kitchen towels, oven mitts… I can live with this! Bubbling rice is making tiny craters in a pot right next to the chicken. My stomach needs to settle a little after all the travel and restaurant food. Upset stomach, lungs filled up with mucous, and coughing is the price I pay for eating out every time. I have become extremely allergic to food colorings, preservatives, and additives. My diet consist of no gluten, sugar, yeast, and milk. A feat impossible to manage without a kitchen.

Another family comes in to make their dinner. We strike up a conversation. "He is fifty-six." shares the brother-in-law of the Lyme patient with a rollator whom I guessed to be in his mid-sixties. He tells me that about eight years ago when he started getting first symptoms he was very athletic and weighed 175 lbs, now down to 115. Extremely high level of mold toxins in his body has wreaked an absolute havoc on his health causing his immune system to completely break down and not be able to fight off Lyme disease. Dr. Sponaugle has been working on detoxing him from the mold for six months now. This disease takes whatever it can. My fingers are tingling again as I am typing.

Somehow through all this I feel the hand of God on my life. Somehow there is His presence every day and bad news just passes by without bringing despair. The steps of the righteous are ordered by the Lord. There is someone here whose three year old daughter has developmental delay.  Because I worked with disabled children before I was able to give her some ideas about the girl's learning, skills, and behaviors. The mother has been praying for help. I am in the right place.

The Island of Misfit Lyme Patients

One, two, three, four....drops of IV fluid are making their way into my veins. This is my fourth IV.  Last night I woke up around nine full of pent up energy. For the first time in months, I felt my body cry for exercise. In a few seconds, I have my sneakers on and I am making my way around the hotel parking lot. Fragrant Florida air strokes my skin and I am rejoicing in my ability to move. A jubilant feeling that can be fully understood only by someone who spent months confined in pain. I don't know what was in the IV, but whatever that was I will take it any day! I notice my tolerance for the cold improves. I cannot wait to continue my therapy.

Friday finds me pumped up and ready to go. I have not felt a surge of energy like this for years. I am on fifteen supplements, two prescription medications, and two IVs formulated just for me according to my lab results. Most of us have experienced a huge improvement in our symptoms. The routine at Sponaugle for most patients consists of a series of detox IVs, followed by a microbial kill protocol, repeat as necessary. It is an intricate process of addressing genetics, brain chemistry, hormones, all organs, the intestinal function and flora, microbial load, exercise and nutrition, combined with willingness to cooperate, grit, and hope for the future.

Everyone in the IV room is signing a card for a student in a catholic seminary who gets to leave today. There is another patient in his twenties who got his discharge date for April 25th. In his tight black pants, tight gray low V-neck shirt, and some sort of a dangling natural necklace he thinks he is oh-so-H*O*T! I just hide my smile and think about my husband. Around hundred pounds of weight at five foot six with a spine disfigured from steroids he only made it through life by God's grace and a sheer power of will to live. There were times when I would come home only to find him in tears from never ceasing pain and air hunger. I would just hold him for hours and pray silently for the pain to leave. There was nothing I could do or say. My embrace brought the little comfort I could give. I never compared his very frail frame to other men. I loved him for this unceasing hope he had and the fight he put out for every breath he took. I wished I could take his suffering and his pain away. But I couldn't.

A young girl, pale and weak, slumps into a chair and covers herself with a blanket. She has not been able to get IVs all week. She has not been well enough and there is no improvement regardless of what they try. The prognosis is unclear and at this point they don't know if they can help. I wish I could just hold her in my arms like I did to my husband and comfort her in any way I can. I wish I could take away her suffering and her pain. But I can't. Watching people suffer is so hard…

My phone rings and I don't recognize the number.

"Hi, you don't know me. I am a Sponaugle patient and I heard you need a ride to an appointment. I got your number from so-and-so."

I am in shock. She brings me to my appointment, takes me to a grocery store, and the pharmacy. The next day she brings me homemade soup and a blueberry smoothie.

"Hi, this is so-and-so. I just wanted to make sure you were back at the hotel and not stranded somewhere. If you need to go anywhere just let me know and I will take you!"

Everyone is pulling together to get through this horrible, complicated disease. Misdiagnosed, mistreated, and misjudged, this is our last stop. We all connect and support each other in any way we can. Everyone offers whatever they have, know, and can do to help out. I have been here for a week and have a phone number for almost every patient in the hotel. Shared suffering creates a platform for closeness that would be impossible outside of this context. People talk about their diagnoses, worries, and intimate details of their lives they would entrust with only the closest of friends. It is like the Island of Misfit Lyme Patients. It is so good to be here.

"You look great!" I hear that all the time. But I don't feel great. I can pull off a great act for a period of time and when out of public eye I crash and burn. Nobody here tells me I look great. They know better than that. We all have been putting on this show for the sake of others who do not see what happens when the door closes behind us. I don't have to explain that to anyone here. We have all done it for years. That is why we love being on the Island of Misfit Lyme Patients. It is SO good to be here!

Chewed up Cookies for Santa

Soft whiteness of fog slowly dances around me. I woke up early and now I am watching its swatches above the lake. If the fog rises, the weather will be beautiful. If it stays, the clouds will start rolling in. I always love these two weeks in the summer away from my family at a swim camp. Time of peace and calm that I live on for the rest of the year. I get to think about the fog. In an essence it is a liquid aerosol suspended in gas. It puzzles me how it becomes white. Isn't it clear when it's liquid? I strain my eyes and try to see the particles.  All of a sudden the fog begins to slowly rise as the sun peaks above the horizon. A promise of a beautiful day...

A memory from a long, long time ago brings me to my current state. How I need the sun to chase out the fog that has been in my brain for so long! My thoughts dispersed who knows where are hard to spot regardless how much I try. I am asked to fill out paperwork for more lab tests. After a very slooooow looooong period where I am trying to get it all together, I forget to fill out one paper out of three and put another one in my pocketbook instead with the sample. My brain is overloaded with toxins and acting like it.

Hauntingly beautiful sculptures from a Dalíesque dream scream their psychedelic colors on the page in front of me. We all have one and these are their images. PET scans of the brain. A normal brain, completely uninteresting, smooth, and mundane, cannot compete with the shapes and colors of brains that were damaged by various toxins. One of the many times I wish I was just completely uninteresting, mundane, and average. Although I am not going to have a PET scan done I wander how much blood flow in my brain there is and where. Reduced blood flow on the scan looks like holes and takes on different colors. I wonder how this affects our behavior. How many kind words were not said, how many skills not used, and how much love not given because of this reduction? I desperately yearn for wholeness so that I can live and love using an uninhibited brain and do the best I can with what I have been given!

I felt a few rays making their way through the veil of the fog yesterday. My first visit with the doctor. A brilliant man who can synthesize webs of information into a cure. My number one problem is toxin overload. I have worked so hard to bring it down! I have gotten a Far Infra Red sauna and sweated almost every day since Christmas. Epsom salt baths, oral Alpha Lipoic Acid, IV Gluathione, colonics, EDTA chelation. I cannot believe there is anything else in me! I feel like I have done a HAZMAT type cleanup of my body and the labs say it is still a complete dump! My red blood cells look like cookies that were snacked on by Santa, only in this case the toxins did the snacking. How can a chewed up red blood cell effectively carry oxygen? It can't.

Next he talks about my microbial load. After six months of Nattokinase my biofilm looks like I took exactly nothing. Swaddled in a blanket of packed gel bacteria are safely resting like babies in a nursery. The biofilm is so thick there is no way I was going to be able to break it up with anything I had available to me. Protomyxzoa carried by mosquitoes are my greatest problem. Unbelievably enough, Lyme is not active although the doctor can tell that I came into contact with it at some point. Babesia, Bartonella, Anaplasma, and company, are all there. Who knows what else is hiding in the jellylike substance the bacteria built to hide from antibiotics.

The doctor addressed hormones, brain chemistry, the gut, the heart... This is the best appointment I have ever had in my life and worth every penny I have spent! His understanding of the intricacies and connections in the human body is mind boggling. He answers questions I have had for years. Everything here is based on cold hard data and is tailored to the individual. I am just beginning and my file is about one inch thick already. Luckily, I record my first appointment which lasts two and a half hours and is so packed with information that I cannot keep up.

I will have labs weekly so that I can be given the right medication. I have a lot going for me. My heart is strong and healthy. Some key labs are just where they are supposed to be. My alternative doctor's nurse advised me on a top-of-the-line probiotic that has kept my gut in the best shape possible. (Dr. Ohhira's Professional Strength probiotic. I am very thankful for my alternative doctor and his nurse. Without them I would be in a wheelchair right now.) I am motivated, determined, and prepared. The doctor can see that. I ask for an aggressive protocol and I get it starting immediately.

I pray I can manage the side effects and the pain. It gets worse before it gets better. Tomorrow I have to take an online test for my class and have to rest up. I manage to read a page or two in my Bible and fall asleep.

Happiness!

Another night with no sleep starts my first drip day.  The first day of the end of sleepless nights. A patient's wife gives me a ride to the clinic. Her husband has been on antibiotics for Lyme for five years and has seen multiple LLMDs (Lyme Literate Medical Doctors) to no avail. Leaves of palm trees are swaying in the wind and hibiscus bushes are showing off their gorgeously large red blooms. Warm raindrops hit the windshield as we turn into Sponaugle parking lot.

After signing in at a kiosk, I am taken to have a needle put in. Next I move to the IV room. Everyone is extremely friendly here. Everyone understands. No need to explain anything. The nurse tells me that we will be working on detox this week. I get my bag of fluids and settle in with a group of patients. We tell stories and laugh the whole time. It is so good to laugh. I see many familiar faces. The patient next to me, hardly able to contain his excitement, tells me how much better he feels. He shares his diagnosis and his improvement in the three months he has been here. Lyme caused him severe anxiety. His serotonin and dopamine levels dropped to rock bottom. He was unable to function on his own and had to be cared for by his mother (he is in his thirties). Now he can drive himself. I am so happy for him. I see one of my new wheelchair friends from Sunday. She came in without her wheelchair. Very slowly and with an awkward gait she moves around the room. We all root for her and her progress. The drip improves my joint pain in just one session. Then I have an appointment with my nurse. We go over my medical history and current symptoms. With this session, my day at Sponaugle is over for today.

One of the patients gives me a ride back. We talk like we have known each other for years. In an essence we have. Through my own suffering, I understand everyone else's. I have been where they are. Separate but together. Suffering brings on a different kind of connection. When I was growing up we all had to watch out for each other. One would always think of others and their needs. Survival was impossible otherwise. The same happens with Lyme disease. In this place of the most despair, is this extreme that I chose as my next step of my journey, I find comfort like nowhere else. People come over and ask if I am OK, how my day is going, and if they can do anything for me. I know they mean it. There is a linking of hearts that only happens through shared pain. We all have to help out each other. We need the support and the understanding. We will not heal without them.

The IV starts taking effect once I get to my room. I cannot remember the last time I felt this positive. Toxins are being removed from my system and I can feel the difference. I have worked hard to prepare myself for the stay. I have gotten vitamin C IVs back home and my body can tolerate higher doses now. They will be part of my protocol here. I have also done ten sessions of EDTA chelation with colonics twice weekly. I have made great strides during this treatment. I have gone from barely crawling around my house and watching every movement I made in order to save energy and prevent pain to being able to fly from Massachusetts to Florida and manage on my own in a hotel.

After the hectic day yesterday, my body unashamedly asks for rest and I end up falling asleep. Tomorrow is an important day. I will find out what is wrong with me and how I can get better. The doctor also agreed to evaluate other family members' labs. I told my sister to email whatever she had for all of them. Hopefully this is not a road to healing just for me but for  them as well. My sister has suffered from chronic Lyme since she was sixteen years old. She will be thirty eight. During the upheaval of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution she got toxoplasmosis. Confined for months in an infectious disease hospital, with no door handles, right across from a cemetery where eerie lights were lit to remember the dead hundred miles from home, she never quite recovered. The picture of her pale and thin face behind a window, we talked through for an hour while whipped by November winds during our allotted biweekly visits, is forever etched in my memory.

"There is a revolution. The government just stepped down" There is no TV in her room which she is not allowed to leave.

"What does that mean?" She asks

"We don't know. Nobody knows." We are all afraid of foreign intervention. The uncertainty just hovers in the air. My classmate's father who works at a hotel in Prague packed his suitcase, left for work two days ago and has not come back home. We don't know if he is ever coming home.

She finally comes home and the revolution is called Velvet because no blood is shed.

How I wish her well.

And the Morning Were the First Day

My alarm clock patiently measures time that is left before the dawn. I have had it since my freshman year in college. I stopped counting how many times I pushed it on the floor with my pillow while sleeping and its parts splattered all over the place. It was made in Germany and I swear it would survive a nuclear attack.

I wish I was that sturdy. It is 2:30 am and I am wide awake, a hallmark of tick borne disease. Today is my first day at Sponaugle. The first day, when the microbial and genetic roulette I have been dealt will begin to untangle. I am fearfully and wonderfully made… As I lie in the darkness I am quietly praying for everyone I met yesterday.

I had arrived on Saturday which turned out to be a wise decision. My body is loudly protesting the travel and sleeping arrangements. I did not realize how much my Tempurpedic bed at home helps me to reduce joint and muscle pain. Most of my day on Sunday includes rest. In early evening I go down to the pool and try to enjoy the 85F weather. I see a group of people with PICC lines and wheelchairs so I walk over guessing they are Sponaugle patients. Sure enough.

We are sharing our stories and the destitute state of some makes me shudder. People have lost their employment, businesses, homes. There are no differences. We are all at the very bottom. The camaraderie and care of the group is overwhelming. They are teaching me the ropes. Tomorrow there are thirteen new patients arriving at Sponaugle and I am one of them.

An emaciated man who looks like he is in his sixties is slowly shuffling towards us leaning on his rollator. He takes care to calculate each step now that neurological Lyme has taken its toll. The group greets him enthusiastically and we are introduced. He has been here since October. He is slurring his speech as he tries to tell me to make my appointments in the morning and always ask for rides. He reminds me of my husband during his last year on earth. My husband would slowly push his rollator down the hall early each morning attached to an oxygen tank. He would lean on the counter as he balanced himself while he tried to fix my tea and a bowl of cereal. Then he would carefully put those on the seat of his rollator and wheel it to the table. I wonder if this man makes breakfast for his wife? They point out another patient in the pool area. They tell me she was a pharmacist at a hospital and now she is worried that she has too much brain damage to go back to her job. I can relate. Just two weeks ago I was in a grocery store and saw some of my students. I could not remember their names,  the classes or the grade they were in. One of them has grown long hair and I could not remember how he looked before.

The hands on the alarm clock move and now I need to get up. I know I will have a difficult day. I slept for three and a half hours. I get ready as quickly as I can and rush downstairs to meet my ride. I get to Sponaugle before nine and wait outside with several other patients. The door opens and I walk in to be greeted by a large picture of Dr. Sponaugle and his drop-dead-gorgeous wife. I start working on my paperwork and have my picture taken for records. I had to put some make up on this morning to cover the ashen color my skin has turned after a sleepless night and now I am glad I did! I am freezing cold and thankful I wore long pants and took a sweater. There is another saliva test for genetics and a urine analysis for heavy metals (I have already had 36 vials of blood drawn, 7 urine analyses, and a cheek swab for genetics two months ago). I have to wait for the saliva test. It must be done thirty minutes after last food or drink and I had to drink water for the urine test.

In the meantime I meet other patients. A cute Amish couple, the husband is wheelchair bound. He passes time by reading his Bible. A teenager greets me and says "Oh hi! I saw you at the hotel and did not realize you were a patient too!" A family with four sweet children that shares they have lost everything because of Lyme disease. Then a nurse comes to get me.  She does my EKG, gives me my schedule for the week and I am done for the day. My first IV is tomorrow and I am seeing both Dr. Sponaugle and the NP on Wednesday. I am glad I came at nine. By now almost every seat in the waiting room is taken and everything is hectic. It is 11:30 and I am headed back to the hotel. I need to rest. The next item on the schedule is a new patient orientation at 2:30.

The orientation is just what one would expect. A complete shocker follows. A lecture on mold and disorders causes by exposure to it. I realize, I need a new washer (mine is a front end loader and they are prone to mold), my laundry needs to move into my basement (plumber and electrician), I need to have my house inspected and remediated if need be. I have kept the house just about sterile and in near perfect condition due to my late husband's pulmonary issues but one never knows. Then I have to keep it at 45% humidity. This means I have to start heating my basement somehow so that the dehumidifier works during early spring and fall and I need another dehumidifier for upstairs. I am in awe at the damage these toxins cause. The presenter also shares some stories of disaster relief workers and their exposure to mold and toxins while helping others. Most of us realize we have a problem.

During a dinner that follows I sit next to a woman who is there with her daughter she adopted from Russia. As conversation turns to our lecture she recalls a relief worker from Chernobyl who died from leukemia caused by the radiation. At that time I was still behind the Iron Curtain. I tell her about my father listening to Radio Free Europe. That is how we learned about the catastrophe and the radioactive cloud that had shifted over Sweden, the Baltic countries, Poland, and us. The Czechoslovakian government kept the disaster secret for two weeks. Supposedly they took all steps they could to protect the citizens. It would have been great had they told us! According to government data there is no reason for concern because the radiation exposure was minimal and it is still being measured and recorded to this day. I am not sure I can believe that. But that is the least of my problems right now.

The evening ends with a more than five hour PhD level lecture on mold, toxins, neurobiology, chemistry, hormones, and tick borne diseases. I am overwhelmed and in awe. If someone can get me well, Dr. Sponaugle can. What he describes exactly matches my symptoms. I leave before he is finished.  The day has been longer that I can manage. It is 10 pm and I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

Follow Every Rainbow...

A million of little mirrors in Boston Harbor are saying goodbye by softly sending rays of shy early spring sun. My body is pushed into the seat and I feel that exhilarating sensation of cabin pressure change as the plane lifts off the tarmac. Yachts huddle in the marina below me still covered in shrink-wrap and gray streets of Boston anxiously await warmer weather. As we climb higher, I see Harvard Yard and the road that leads to my doctor's office. The scene quickly disappears as the plane enters a thick layer of white clouds. I am off to another adventure that life has fiendishly thrown me and somehow I am supposed to catch this oversized curveball. It is much bigger than what I can manage on my own.

"You're such a type A, just relax. You have no idea what is going to happen next spring!" my friend and mentor told me at the end of school year when I was explaining to her how I was going to have to study throughout the summer so that I could get into a Calculus B class without taking Trigonometry or Calculus A.

"You have no idea…"

She was oh-so-right! Like always. That is why I talk to her. One of my guardian angels. Now I am praying that the hotel I will be staying at lets me use their printer so that I can continue working on a much easier class that I had to take instead. I need the class to renew my license.

As the plane glides along, the eastern seaboard and the islands below begin to slowly fade into the distance. While looking like freshly baked cookies on a cookie sheet of the ocean, my thoughts wander over the maelstrom that hit my life last year.

"Do I have Lyme disease?" I am well acquainted with the Lyme disease controversy. My sister in the Czech Republic was misdiagnosed for sixteen years. My doctor types my symptoms into his electronic device.

"No, you don't." His little app told him so! "I am going to give you sleep medication and if that does not work I am going to give you an antidepressant."

"But I am not depressed."

"I don't' think you are depressed but we will try it and see if it works"

"But this is not me! Normally I kayak, take harp lessons, sing in a choir, and work full time. Now I cannot get out of bed!" Unfortunately for me, my husband passed away three years ago so now I get the label of a crazy widow who is making herself sick to get attention.

"I will give you sleep medication and I will see you next week."

There is nothing I can do. My insurance requires a referral for everything so if I want to be seen by someone else I will have to pay. It is Tuesday in early August, and I just left a camp in New Hampshire where I was supposed to be till Saturday. I am feeling very unwell. By Thursday I am on the phone to my endocrinologist because I know that he will listen to me. I am crying with pain and the uninterested secretary is trying to give me an appointment a month away. After about half an hour of haggling and pleading. I am getting an appointment in exactly two weeks. I call an alternative doctor in Boston. He is in Russia and I get an appointment ten days away.  His nurse tells me to take Holy Basil twice a day. By now I will take anything. I have to take it three times a day to even take the edge off my suffering. Friday I call my PCP back. He is not there and his replacement never calls me back. School is starting in exactly two and a half weeks and I am not able to function.

Monday I am back at my PCP's office. By now, I cannot drive anymore and I am not able to take my dogs out (ten feet outside my front door) so they have to be boarded. I feel like every cell in my body is being eaten by something. My friend brings me food because I cannot prepare anything on my own. I know that if I don't get help, I am not going to make it. My debilitated state persuades my doctor to test me for Lyme and other tick borne diseases. By the evening my feet, hands, and face are tingling and going numb. I call my doctor back on Tuesday and he gives me Doxycycline 100mg twice a day for ten days. Thursday I get another call from him. I am supposed to come off the antibiotic because the test came back negative and further treatment is not warranted. I flatly refuse to come off. It hasn't helped but it stopped the progression of whatever is going on with me.

Monday my friend is taking me to Boston to see the alternative doctor. As we enter the city I get a phone call. He had an emergency and had to cancel my appointment. I have to wait till Thursday to be seen. Thursday he starts me on IVs and tells me I need six months of antibiotics. He asks me to pay for them out of pocket so that the insurance company does not report him and it does not go on his record. I am glad he actually listened to me, so I comply and think… it is $250 a month… I can afford that…

I search for help wherever I can. As $250 quickly turns to $2,500 and that turns to $25,000 and keeps  steadily climbing I know there is no way I can afford that. Within five short months, I have spent everything I have and for the first time in my life asked my father for money. There is next to no result to this extreme effort and expenditure. After a reaction to a new antibiotic set me back even further and I am not able to work anymore, I know something needs to happen and it needs to happen quickly. I still legally have my job, a good credit, and I am able to borrow money. If I don't do something now, the chances that I will be unemployed and disabled for the rest of my life are very high.

So now I am on a plane to Florida watching the sheep-like clouds below me. My eyes follow miles of Atlantic coast beaches that look like a toddler took a tan crayon and randomly drew a line.  I am to report at Sponaugle Wellness Institute at 9:30 on Monday morning. I don't have anyone who would be able to take ten to fifteen weeks off and come with me. Like many times before I am taking a risk and making a difficult trip alone.  I will be living out of a hotel for weeks, driving myself around a place I don't know with a PICC line in my arm, dealing with side effects of IVs and medications, all that while trying to finish my online class. I am not anxious. I don't have the strength to be. For the first time in my life I only have the strength to take the next step. My head rests on the plane wall next to the window. As we reach the coast of South Carolina my eyes begin to close and I drift off to merciful sleep.

Who Am I?

That is what I have been trying to figure out for a long time! And not for the lack of personal development. For some reason I have belonged to so many clubs that nobody wants to be in! I lived in a communist country, I was a caregiver, I am a widow, and now I am in treatment for a tick borne disease, just to name a few. Every one of those events radically changed my life. Through those circumstances I have become a completely different person. My worldview changed dramatically. As a result I see myself as a work in progress and this blog is partially a record of my life. That is why I find it hard to answer a question like "Who am I?" Somewhere I read that we identify ourselves by our roles. I think that that is partially true. However, throughout my life I have had to find my identity at a much different level.

I remember being about six years old. I was coming home from school with my mother and I saw that two houses down from where I lived workers were finishing up a construction of a new house. At that time when a new house was being built, there was a small shed erected to protect tools, equipment, and materials right next to the construction site. I knew those sheds very well. My parents also had one when they were building their home. I would go in, take a hammer and nails and try to hammer them flat observing the new shape they were taking under the blows of a five-year-old. I would do the same with bottle caps. Then I would take the caps and make a hole in them with a nail. When I had enough I would string them on a piece of rope. I would find all sort of fun things to do there. It was a treasure chest of fun.

Now this neighbor's shed was being torn down because the construction was finished. After my mother and I got home I sneaked out and ran to my neighbor's. There was nobody there. I crawled through a hole in the dilapidated fence and headed for the half demolished shed. I didn't feel like I was doing anything wrong, after all,  they were going to tear this whole thing down. I entered and started looking. During my search I found some rusty nails and a piece of rope. I put them in my pocket so that I could use them for one of my VIPs (Very Important Projects!) I just KNEW that in one of those cans and boxes there had to be a treasure somewhere. I carefully shook each one. There were so many! Finally! A sound like a treasure. The lid was shut tight and would not open. I remembered the nails in my pocket. I took one out and tried to pry the lid off. I had to try harder. And harder. Pop! The lid flew open and so did the green oil paint inside and splattered all over my brand new corduroy school pants. I tried to wipe it off with my hands but it only made things worse.

Sheepishly, I headed home. My mother was beside herself. She was yelling at me. I cannot say I blamed her. It was deep communism and clothes were very difficult to come by. When I took off my pants she looked in the pockets and took out the nails and the rope. With that she was just speechless.

Since then I have realized that that is at the core of who I am. Throughout time the distance of sheds, size, and price of those boxes have increased exponentially. There were times that I was in the wrong shed, opened the wrong box, and had the wrong clothes on. When I was forced to not explore my horizons is when I was the most unhappy. I watched my four year old niece help out her older brothers with drilling and nailing together three two-by-fours this past summer. I realized; it is genetic! I laughed and hugged her tight. Whatever I do, wherever I am, regardless what is going on, if I am going to be happy I need to be able to search for and open my boxes of treasures. The day I don't is when I lose myself.

I want you to be there as I open another box that happens to be in my shed. The label on it says Healing from Lyme Disease.