Looking at a shadow

Once again I do apologize for the large time gap in my posts, but I grew so busy with the end of the school year that I wasn’t able to focus on my blog and that isn’t fair to my readers. 

Anyways, I will finish where I left of and then give you an update on my life!  After I arrived in Baltimore after having sat on the plane ride WITH MY MOTHER thinking that I possibly had gonorrhea; my mom had a voicemail on her phone from my LLMD that my blood culture had been contaminated possibly.  I was extremely aggravated at this point because the next blood culture would take 24hrs, then 48 hrs, and then 72 hrs for further results.  Regardless of what my blood culture said it was decided I needed to get the PICC out so I had decided I would get the PICC out the next day at the clinic and I would just do the cultures there since we know and trust the staff.  

Pre-PICC pull

My PICC!

Had to post this!

Could you imagine what it was like waiting for those results?  I had to wait around on my Spring Break thinking that I may have gonorrhea.  The worst part was my mom thought I had gonorrhea too!!!  She would ask me repetitively and she would bring it up when we wouldn’t even be talking about how I was feeling.  We could be talking about the weather and then all of the sudden she would be like “I promise I won’t get mad if you slept with a random stranger, but did you?”  Then to top it off the blood culture took forever to come back because it was hard to determine the specific species and it took about 5 days!  Luckily they started me on Omnicef and Cipro because it was determined that the bacteria was gram negative pretty early on but they still wanted to verify the species.  The bacteria was pseudomonas putida, which is an opportunistic infection and because I had the PICC line in my arm I was considered an opportunity I guess.  I did two weeks of oral antibiotics and those two weeks were actually kind of rough surprisingly because I hadn’t taken those orals in awhile.  My stomach wasn’t used to it and because I had an active infection in my blood, I definitely felt the die off of the bacteria. 

  Shit happens and life goes on, that is what I have learned.  Mentally that was a set back for me, I have a tendency to think that bad things only happen to me.  I am beginning to realize that they happen to everyone, but usually you only hear everyone else’s highlights not their lows.  I did finish the semester with a 3.63, qualifying me to make the University’s deans list, which was a very satisfying feeling because I do work very hard for my grades.  I also presented two of my Psychology research pieces at conferences, one being the Virginia Psychology Association in Norfolk.  

Me presenting my poster at the Virginia Psychology Association

When I look back I feel like I am accomplishing a lot, but when I live day to day I don’t feel fulfilled.  I feel like I am missing something and I don’t feel “better”.  I guess I keep trying all of these supplements or more naturalistic approaches and I haven’t seen the results I want, which also contributes to my feelings of dissatisfaction.  I have begun dry needling for my neck pain/back pain/headaches; I have seen some relief sometimes and I guess that is better than no relief.  I also tried protandim, which is a supplement but I didn’t see any relief with that.  I have been reading a lot about the cannabis oil and I am tempted to ask my LLMD about it at my appointment next week.  I think they are studying its effects on killing Lyme and helping with symptom relief.  Also, I discovered that I have biotoxins, whatever that means.  I went to a biotoxin illness doctor last week and I failed the vision test so badly; I got blood work done to try and target which systems the biotoxins are effecting like my cardiovascular system, my endocrine system, etc.  The doctor seemed promising.

Another weird reality in my life is that many of my friends have graduated this past year and I still have another semester, which I am fine with; it is just weird and causing me to reflect.  I have recently met another student at my University, who also suffers from Lyme disease and many coinfections; she is a spitting image of who I was a year ago.  She was over last night and when I opened the door I felt like I was opening the door to a shadow that was me a year ago as creepy as that sounds.  She has delayed speech, lost so much weight, one side of her face droops a little bit, she goes on tangents, and she thinks just like me!  She is at a time in her life where she can’t be happy for other people because she is struggling so much herself; she is extremely bitter.  I could relate, a normal person would think we were crazy; but I understood every single thing she said.  It made me realize how far I have come in a year.  I may have a ways to go, but it is nice to realize where I was at one time.  

Tomorrow is my birthday and I absolutely hate birthdays because for some reason I think of it as celebrating one more year I skated past death.  I think of me surviving one more year of the grim reaper reaching his hand out, trying to grab me, and me somehow surviving yet another year but I don’t know how I did it this year.  When I reflect back, I literally had stopped taking my medication for 5 days last July, I was skin and bones in September, I had sepsis in January, I had another bacteria in my blood in March, and yet I am still here!  HOW is all I want to know?!  I guess that is the definition of resilience.  There were days I swear I saw death especially last July, but I did it.  One more year down.  22 tomorrow. 

“I want to meet myself from someone else’s point of view.”