I'm weathering the most recent increase of Tetracycline fairly well. My balance is more off than usual and I'm needing to use a cane inside my very small home. Usually, I can navigate inside fairly well. After all the house is seven hundred sixty square feet in toto. And there's enough furniture for any spry senior citizen to cruise along in an effort to avoid Durable Medical Equipment to enhance ambulation. Alas I am neither Senior nor spry, and so I use my cane somewhat reluctantly because swerving into the gun cabinet and the cat box both have intolerable results. 

   But those aren't unexpected side effects. The unexpected side effects are what a friend of mine describes as "glimpses of wellness.' The first unexpected side effect was weight loss. I knew that in theory, one should lose weight on the carbohydrate sparing diet which is part of treatment. But I hadn't lost any weight for a long time. On average, I was gaining five pounds every year. After twenty years, those one hundred pounds seemed to be firmly entrenched and I had resigned myself to practicing fat acceptance. I didn't believe my doc when he told me the Nystatin would help keep the cravings down. Imagine my surprise when he was right and the cravings did not come for me in the middle of the night or during some stressful situation. My clothing became looser. I wasn't sure I liked the wattle that was replacing my double chin, but I was happy to find this unexpected weight loss. 

   A more recent unexpected side effect is that I care more about my appearance. I'm enjoying wearing clothing again that is not a t-shirt and baggy jeans. Or a t-shirt and sausage casing tight jeans. I finally have felt comfortable enough to throw away my sweat pants, much to my husband's delight.   I am currently coveting a pair of Frye boots that a friend has up for sale.  I've wanted a pair of Frye boots for a very long time. Like back to adolescence time. The price is reasonable, for a pair of these boots, but I'm still having trouble justifying the purchase. Because, after all, I do not NEED this pair of boots. I want a pair of kick-ass boots. Last night, I even dreamed I was wearing the boots. In my dream, I saw my teen-aged body, the body that was beautiful at the time, and yet I did not know it. 

   It occurs to me that the situation remains the same. I am a body that is beautiful in this time, but I do not know it.  I was at the Beauty Lounge today, having low lights put into my hair and had an opportunity to see my hair around my face,slicked back and sleek. I realized I was looking at an older, but not bad looking woman. My jaw line is less rounded and for once, I did not notice my droopy eyelids. For the first time in a long time, I could look at my face in the mirror and like how I looked. This is an unexpected side effect.

   Another unexpected side effect has been the ability to wean off the majority of my anti-depressants. As my brain is recovering, the medications I have taken for years, and expected to take for life, have become more harmful to my system than good.  I now know what brain shivers are and the hot-cold chills that accompany too much serotonin in my system.  One medication has been completely eliminated. The other medication is at one third of the dose it used to be. I was incredulous when my Lyme doc started suggesting that these medications needed to be weaned out, that they were too much. At first I put it off to his frankly stated abhorrence of one of the medications I was on. A very pricey moneymaker for the pharmaceutical company marketing it specifically for Fibromyalgia and chronic pain associated with depression. To my doc's way of thinking, my depression is from the Lyme Disease. His assertions usually are counter to conventional thinking. With trepidation I have done as he asked and been pleasantly surprised. I have hope that I can be vibrant again. Even as I'm having pain and fatigue, I feel hopeful. That is the best unexpected side effect of all.

Blessings abound

I am in the middle of another increase in my antibiotics and may not be online much.  Things seem to be progressing well according to my doc and in between the bouts of achiness and fatigue I see glimmers of good function.

Blessings abound 

  Today is gray and damp. I am feeling the dampness, particularly on the left side of my body, the places were pain paths are well worn. My left side is like the Long Trail with peaks and valleys. I've hiked portions of the Long Trail when I was healthier and remember the hikes fondly. Long stretches of wooded glens with ferns and the green yellow light filtered by the summer foliage.  Then the climbs on narrow trails, mostly in sun, to the ridges of granite freckled with lichen. I remember the overnights in shelters, just my hiking partner and me. In one cabin we heard a very loud scratching and could not locate the source. It was dusk and we were stopped for the overnight at  Skylight Pond. We looked outside and all around but could not find the what we imagined to be a very large beast scrabbling at the wood. We returned into the rough hewn pine of the cabin. The sound continued. Patient listening brought our attention to a blue plastic pail. Inside the pail was a field mouse, scrabbling, scrabbling, trying to climb the sides of the pail to escape. There were little bits of husk from seeds in the pail and the story revealed itself. How we laughed at ourselves to see the thing we feared was a scared wee bit of mouse, trying to save his life. We took the pail out into the woods and gently laid it on it's side. Mousy scampered away. 

  Later that night, as I laid on a platform of ply wood and pine, snuggled into my sleeping bag, I reflected that fear of the unknown always seems disproportionately bigger than the thing revealed. I slept well that night in the woods. The next morning we arose and continued on our journey.

Blessings abound

and it seems to be becoming a habit.  I'm in a phase with Lyme treatment when I am taking Tetracycline and we are in the increase phase. We've added tetracycline twenty minutes before breakfast. I can't take any dairy for two hours before or after. That's ok, I can make that work. I'm mostly soy based for those kinds of things right now except for some yogurt and half and half in my coffee about two times a day. The challenges to surmount are :arising early enough to take the medication and then forcing down food earlier than I normally would. I usually need to be awake an hour or so before I start to eat everything and hav usually started the morning with a cup of coffee in bed, brought to me by my loving spouse who wants to get me off to work to keep making the big bucks (insert sarcasm here).

Because I am in a ramp up phase, I am starting another herxe. Yesterday found me particularly giddy at work and having brain fog. I am fortunate that there was an extra nurse to cover and so I started my weekend early. This is good because this morning the all over aching is setting into my muscles and bones.  I've been watching dawn creep into the sky while waiting and then eating. Grey blue clouds shaped like sky whales float above the ridge. Nature is on the other side of the window while I sit here with technology and all it's sharp edges.  This morning everything seems to be fraught with contrast and opposition. 

Blessings abound.

My breath mists in the air smelling like water released from earth meeting the sky trees in bud. Bird song echoes from tree to ridge to my ears, songs of birds building families wrapped in my worn, dog-chewed healing quilt, the one she said made me look as if I were an ancient priestess.  I rock, generating warmth amid the dewy morning dampness. if scars are a warrior's beauty mark, then surely I am one of the best.

Phoebe! Phoebe! Phee! 

Songs of the chickadees. One brave sould comes to a tree near me.

Sliver of moon in the dawning sky,the ridge is glowing,

Not the near one, the far. For the first time I notice seed pearl buds on the old apple tree, the ones they played on the one Mario, the iguana claimed as her own amidst very thin,whippy branched twigs cupping the sky. 

Words keep coming. Words sweep the sky spring into mind as I name Creation around me. This morning I cannot stop the words. Somebody turned on the faucet gushing torrents of cool, descriptive words giving shape to my day. 

Stella pinned me to the bed, her sleek little body pressing, sucking the warmth from my own body, generating more until my bones ached too much from not move. She is leaden, pressing down into me. 

Catapult.

Sliver of moon, gray blue sky.  I see trees I would like to thin to see the mountain better, but I will not cut them. I cannot endure their screams. Trees hurt, too. They only want to help. 

Wait! I must not neglect the water! Water distant ,rushing and now the steely blue Canada Jay raises voice:

" I am here!Here! Hear!" Late to choir this Sunday morning. 

And now the earth is moving,moving to show the brightening. I feel the earth revolving, Fast! Faster! Fastest! yet I do not cling to her with crescent fingernails, one crescent in the sky. I am held to her with the gently embrace of gravity. The gravity of the situation and now Lora's breath in three beats takes in scents a canine oenophile scenting the heady bouquet of morning.  Someone's rooster crows. 

I lift my head, take my eyes away from the page and catch the subtle half moon of light kissing the mountain Mons.  So much to see,hear,smell in this dynamically quiet forest. Spinning downwards, the sun revealed lances my periphery, lights the trees, buds,birds,dog.  I will put down my pen and be, the forest silhouette blazed into my retinas.