Status Report

Or, The State of the Girl with the Sun in Her Head.

I'm not doing well. In fact, I'm doing quite poorly.

The last few days have been rather brutal. Vertigo coupled with intense nausea is not exactly what I'd choose, had I the option. I'd also pass on the blinding headaches and all-over joint and muscle pain. I wish I could distract myself, but reading is too difficult, and television usually provides too much optical stimulation, which results in more nausea and pain. Luckily, audiobooks and podcasts are generally tolerable, so I've been passing the time with my iPod.

I can't be sure, but my guess is that I'm in another die-off cycle with the Lyme bacteria. The bacteria's life cycle is (if I'm remembering correctly) around four weeks long, so every four weeks a new crop of baby bacteria show up to be (hopefully) killed off by the antibiotics. About four weeks after I initally started antibiotic treatment, I had a very bad week. That was four weeks ago. So I'm hoping that the die-off reaction will subside and I'll go back to feeling awful instead of miserable.

I'm a cheery little rainbow, aren't I?

Nick has been very helpful during this time. I'm really glad he took Reiki classes, because that's been the one thing that's helped me through the last few days. Last night, within twenty minutes I went from being curled up on the floor crying to sitting in a chair and nibbling saltines. Today, when the dizziness was particularly horrible and I felt quite faint, I asked him to send me some Reiki from work.

I suspected that my blood pressure was doing funny things (common in CFS), so I checked my BP before he started Reiki. It was something like 97/45, which is low even for me, and my pulse was racing at nearly 100 beats per mintue. Within a few minutes, I started to feel a little better, so I took my BP again. It'd risen to around 110/58, and my pulse had slowed to a much more reasonable rate. So, you know, that was kind of cool. I don't know how this Reiki thing operates, but it works.

Anyway, I'm hoping to feel a little better tomorrow. Our friend Eric is in town, and his sister is hosting a pumpkin-carving party. I want to make an Obama-o-lantern, but I'll have to see how good/bad I feel. Perhaps Nick will carve a pumpkin in my honor if I can't go.