I know. It’s been a long time. When I wandered over to my WordPress account yesterday, I was surprised to learn I hadn’t even logged on in over six months. But recently, a fair number of people have asked me about my blog, and each time I’ve felt a little tug to return.
Since my last post, No. 1 and I have been to India for a third round of treatments, rented out our house, and moved twice. More than seven years after he first got sick, my husband’s neurological symptoms are still a big part of our daily lives. And though there are sometimes entire months that he continues to feel extremely ill and days in which he must force himself to get out of bed or off the couch, he has improved. Dramatically, actually. Just in the last year, we’ve picked up yoga and surfing, he’s playing the guitar, and we’re even taking dance lessons. We had a few extra days in India after his scheduled treatments, so we traveled 18 hours round-trip by train and spent Diwali in the Himalayan foothills. If you’ve watched the Amazing Race, you know what train stations look like in India. These things wouldn’t have happened two years ago, or even one.
Whether he is still fighting residual bacteria or rebuilding the parts of his brain that were damaged by those bacteria, or both, is unclear. The stem cells he’s received in India should be able to help his body do both, but it seems reasonable that they would be more effective with fewer tasks to divide among them. At home, we are attempting to support his body’s immune system and natural healing abilities as much as possible, including juicing, vitamins & supplements, lots of yoga and long walks sprinkled with a little surfing and basketball, meditation, herbal antibiotics, a gluten-free and mostly vegetable-based diet, and so on and so forth, seemingly forever.
There is so much more I could say about our journey, but the reason I came back now is because I was reminded yesterday of this spectacular testimony for Lyme disease patients and their care in Pennsylvania. It was given in 2011, but the information remains extremely relevant, especially this month, as Pennsylvania prepares to host the ILADS sponsored Lyme and Tickborne Disease Conference, and the state senate sends SB177 back to appropriations. While awareness is growing, the information Dr. Smith has to share should be common knowledge worldwide. Birds and insects migrate, and people move pets across continents, so it’s silly for any nation (except maybe the Antarctic) to think Lyme isn’t already affecting its citizens. Lots of people like to tell you Lyme isn’t in their area. We heard that a lot in India, actually, and patients here on the West Coast hear it all the time. But statistics like this report say otherwise, and if it’s made it to a totally isolated continent like Australia, which it has, I’m just gonna throw it out there that perhaps it isn’t so much that Lyme hasn’t made it to countries like India, yet, but that too many doctors there don’t know what they’re looking at.
Anyway, I would like to encourage everyone to take a few minutes and listen to Dr. Smith’s testimony and maybe even share this and help me spread the word about one of the fastest growing diseases on the planet. ‘Cause it doesn’t have to be like this. It really doesn’t.
Hold On To This 