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.