Fifteen Minutes of Delusion

My blogging friend Crash is collecting fabric for a wonderful Magic Quilt project. The idea is to collect fabric that has a story attached, and make those magical swatches into a quilt. ( Click here to find out what the quilts are for and why they are magic. ) This is the shirt and the story I decided to send in: Given the circumstances, a trip to Hawaii seemed like a very selfish move. My wife was living half a continent away so she could get medical treatment, and my two young girls were finishing their last year of school in Utah before we were to sell the house and move away from our vital support network of family and friends. Yet given the circumstances, a touch of selfishness was just what I needed. And twentieth high school reunions only come once in a lifetime. So with assurances from both heaven and earth that my loved ones would be well taken care of in my absence, I boarded a plane for Honolulu. Near the top of my list was the task to find an Aloha shirt or two – a classy o...

Sharon Rose, of WCSH TV station in Portland, Maine just did a 4 part series on chronic lyme. I must say I think it's the best news coverage I've ever seen on chronic lyme. It's accurate, informative and interesting. They interviewed 4 patients who told their stories. All sound familiar to me in one way or another. Even though each person with lyme experiences different symptoms, one lyme patient can nearly always identify another. I can identify with each of these patients in several ways. The 2nd lady they interviewed has lyme-induced chemical sensitivity. I think she did a superb job of clearly explaining how chemicals effect her. Here's the link to the stories. On the left is an article. On the right are the 4 stories. The 1st one is at the bottom. Watch from the bottom up. Each is 4-6 minutes, so not too long. http://www.wcsh6.com/news/health/story.aspx?storyid=119882&catid=273 Sam Donta, th...

With May being Lyme Disease Awareness Month, I want to share my “story” in hopes that someone will benefit from it – either by letting you know you are not alone or by helping you or someone you love receive a correct diagnosis. I have divided it into chapters so if you need to take a break, you can easily find where you left off. Truthfully, this is only a small snapshot of what I went through.    Chapter 1: The Beginning Up until 1999, I was an active, busy young woman. I was happily married and had a beautiful daughter and another baby on th e wa y. I loved being a mother. I also liked gardening, enjoyed nature and had fun inventing new recipes in the kitchen. Italian food was my favorite thing to make and, above all, eat! Well, that and sushi.   In December 1998 while I was pregnant with daughter #2, I caught some kind of virus or bacterial infection that was going around which turned into bronchitis. I went on antibiotics for it and afterward, never reall...

As you know, myself, Don, Anna and Alyssa have chronic Lyme Disease . This disease is a very misunderstood, misdiagnosed and overlooked illness. In 2008, 35,198 cases were reported to the CDC ( Center for Dise ase Control ). Actual new cases are conservatively estimated at 422,000. You can get Lyme in any state -- west coast, east coast, north, south and every state in between. It is everywhere. Ticks know no boundaries. Lyme is also found in many countries. It is on every continent except Antarctica . It is the fastest growing infectious disease in North America . There are more new cases of Lyme disease each year than there are of HIV , West Nile , Swine Flu , and Avian Flu combined. My friend, Ashley, over at Lymenaide , has started a project to create a Nationwide Awareness Campaign for Lyme disease. Her brother, is filming a Public Service Announcement! I am so excited about it! It is time to get the word out about Lyme Disease. Knowledge is power and a vital part of getting...

Continuing our two-part series on Lyme Disease for Lyme Disease Awareness Month, we welcome back my wife Kara as guest blogger. To make matters even more complicated, ticks also carry other infections. If you have Lyme Disease, you will most likely have one or more of the other infections. The 3 most common co-infections are Bartonella, Ehrlichia and Babesia. Others include Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, mycoplasmas and viruses. They further complicate things by adding their own symptoms. The co-infections are pretty stealthy as well and do considerable damage. So by this point, I'm sure you're thinking – OK, so if a person thinks they have Lyme or one of the other infections just go to the doctor and get tested. Not that simple. The “standard” test for Lyme Disease is the Western Blot. When it is performed by a “normal” lab such as LabCorp or Quest, this test is between 10% and 30% accurate. The CDC has known this from the start and has always said Lyme diagnosis is a clinical ...

Readers, today we have a special treat: my wife Kara has written a couple of posts to help us observe Lyme Disease Awareness Month, which has been going on since the first of May. This is the first of two parts. Thank you, Kara! If you are a regular reader of our blog, you will know that our family has Lyme Disease. All four of us. Since we have been diagnosed with Lyme, we often get questions about how we all “happen” to have it. Quickly followed by “What is Lyme?”, “How do you get it?”, “What kind of symptoms do you have?”. We hope that the knowlege you gain here will be of help to you or someone you know and love. Lyme Disease is the #1 vector borne disease. It is a serious bacterial infection caused by Borrelia Bergdorferi, a spirochete. It is transmitted most commonly by ticks. Once infected, humans can transmit it sexually and also congenitally to the fetus. A bit about ticks: Ticks are little creatures but they carry big diseases. They can be as tiny as the period at the end of...

Yesterday was a pretty good day, at least as far as how I felt. I've kicked the Motrin habit, thanks to my successful visit to the dentist, and I reduced my dosage of another medication that I'm taking to help with side effects of the antibiotic. Between the two, I seem to be doing much better. I even had the energy and time to exercise and write this morning. And I feel good enough to blog. That's always a good sign.

I must say, the two day medication vacation was very successful. I felt better during the last two days than I have for several weeks. I suspect one reason the antibiotic was hitting me so hard this time around is because I was taking painkillers for an increasingly uncomfortable toothache. I'm not sure if there was any drug interaction, but I should be able to find out now. I made my way to the dentist yesterday, and he found a cracked filling that had allowed significant decay underneath. My tooth feels much better today, so I should be able to forgo my daily Motrin routine. As I start back in on my antibiotic in just a few minutes, hopefully things will go a little more smoothly this time around.

I really need a break. Not from work or the kids, but from my antibiotic regimen. The last few days have been particularly tough for some reason. I like to think it's because all of those little Lyme bugs are dying and clogging up my neural pathways, but it's probably just because I'm old and getting older and my body needs a break. The doctor told me to take a break from the meds if I needed to , so today I'm taking a medication vacation, just to see if that helps. So far, so good.

These past two weeks, I've felt better than I have in months; possibly even years. I think it's a combination of things: Kara's home and doing well The girls are back in school and we're all on a working routine I've been on antibiotics for three months to treat the Lyme I've been off antibiotics for a couple of weeks, giving my body a break. With my new-found energy and consistency, I've been able to exercise more in the last two weeks than the previous two years put together, and it's been great. I've been running and biking and Wii Fitting, and hopefully making a dent in the 25 new pounds that have made my waistline their home. Since we sold the car and bought the van and Kara's been at home, we've been kind of a one-car family, and Kara's GPS has been the one we've used, leaving Carly to sit in a bag, waiting for me to take a work trip or something. The other day, I had a flash of inspiration and took Carly with me on my morning ...

After more than a week of frequent rain, we've had a few sunny days. As a result, the mowers have been running all day along the street. Mine included. Since I hadn't mowed out back since June, the need was acute. Although, to be honest, a long dry spell this summer greatly reduced yard care urgency. This dry spell now appears to be over. So, with a bit of lawn mowing effort I have managed to turn myself into a bundle of achy stiffness. We'll see how much of this is age, and how much is the Lyme treatment. The doctor yesterday told me to take a month off from my antibiotics. It's only been a day, and I think I'm already starting to feel some improvement. We'll see. Anna's Lyme test came back, and while the results weren't as overwhelmingly positive as mine, they are still pretty clearly so. We've decided not to start her on antibiotics until next month, when the school year is well underway. The guinea pigs are still doing fine. Anna is too busy taki...

Kara and I went to our Lyme doctor today. He's a well known specialist, but I don't think he's the key Lyme doctor. Sorry. The antibiotics made me do it. The visit went well. I'm finally getting a handle on this guy. He is eccentric multiplied by odd. If a novelist made him up, nobody would accept him as a believable character. But he does seem to know his stuff. I have been gradually feeling more and more fatigued and mentally foggy as my treatment has progressed. He warned me this would happen, and today he gave me some things to try to combat this. We'll see how it works. The girls went over to a friends house while we were at the doctor, so they were out of our hair until after Activity Days ended at 8:00. It was nice to have some quality time together. Even if it did involve de-boning five game hens and exchanging a bra at the store.

Just a few bullet points to keep you caught up: As a result of last months hail storm, the insurance adjuster is coming to look at our roof tomorrow. It looks fine to me, but then again my neighbors' roofs all look fine to me and they have all been totaled by the insurance companies. I am scheduled to host four more blog tour book stops this summer. Watch this space! We went to the Lyme doctor yesterday. He was quite impressed with Kara's new look. I started antibiotics today. Kara needs to wait and discuss this with her GI doc. Yesterday I grabbed a jar of spaghetti sauce in the fridge. The jar was lightly stuck to the shelf, and rather than come unstuck, it broke in half. Later a tub of sour cream jumped to the floor. It was apparently food suicide day, and the result was lots of wiping. School is almost over. The girls are excited. I am, too - mostly because 5:30 revile really sucks. Hopefully we can keep some semblance of routine going. That's all for now. Thanks for st...

This has been quite a weekend. In addition to fighting the cold/flu, I had a visit with the Lyme doctor. Last month, when we took Kara there, he suggested that I allow myself to be tested for Lyme as well. While the current conventional wisdom is that Lyme can't be transmitted from person to person, there is increasing evidence that it in fact can. Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme bacteria, is a spirochete - as is Syphilis. Draw your own conclusions. So on Friday I got my test results and, as suspected, my test came back positive. But not the "kinda sorta if-you-read-it-this-way" positive that Kara's test had. This was a "you've-had-this-for-a-long-time slam-dunk" positive. Which actually makes some sense if you think about it, and really answers a few questions. Before my family moved to Hawaii, we lived in Nebraska. I distinctly remember being bitten by a tick. This would have been in the late '70's, and Lyme disease was just b...