So how am I doing?
Well, today being my Lymiversary and all, I was hoping to spend much of the day in relative comfort and appreciate the fact that I was much better than how I was a year ago.
This didn't quite happen.
I woke up this morning July, 5th, with the worst stomach ache I think I have ever had in my life. There was burning and sharp pains. At times, it felt like I was getting stabbed right through the gut with a zillion razorblades.
At first, I thought I may have had food poisoning, but I didn't have a fever and I wasn't vomiting either.
Then, I thought I had appendicitis, but appendix pain is supposed to be more on the side. Mine was right in the center.
It wasn't until a little later that I realized the pain could have been a herx (i.e. die-off) reaction, or at least some kind of adverse reaction, to apple cider vinegar. See, over the holiday, I unknowingly ate chicken that had been marinated in an Italian dressing that had apple cider vinegar as its second ingredient. Apple cider vinegar kills off yeast, parasites and God-knows-what-else so it's very possible the pain was from the release of endotoxins during die-off.
The stomach pain was so intense that I was laid up on the couch all day and this triggered very vivid flashbacks from one year ago. Even the sight of the tray table I had in front of me with half-sipped drinks, straws in each glass, seemed all-too-familiar. The cream of rice I ate...the daytime TV channels I watched...the overall malaise that I felt and inability to go outside of the house--it was like I was experiencing a downward spiral all over again, exactly one year later. I kept saying to myself, "This seriously can't be happening, exactly one year later. What are the odds?"
As I write this, my stomach is a little better so I'm hoping everything settles down eventually and that this is all simply a herx issue and nothing else major. But, man, talk about a sick little trick to be played on somebody who's experiencing their one-year Lymiversary. What can you do, though, but roll with it and don't start panicking!
Stomach issues aside, how am I doing one year after getting Lyme disease?
Not too bad, I suppose. In fact, I recently saw my (Lyme-literate) doctor, just about a week ago, and he gave me a stellar report. According to the orthomolecular machine he uses, my body now requires about 70 percent less vitamins and herbs than it did at the end of January. Even better, many of the vitamins and herbs I took specifically for liver function are no longer needed. One of these herbs is milk thistle, which means my liver is officially "cleaned out".
Well, today being my Lymiversary and all, I was hoping to spend much of the day in relative comfort and appreciate the fact that I was much better than how I was a year ago.
This didn't quite happen.
I woke up this morning July, 5th, with the worst stomach ache I think I have ever had in my life. There was burning and sharp pains. At times, it felt like I was getting stabbed right through the gut with a zillion razorblades.
At first, I thought I may have had food poisoning, but I didn't have a fever and I wasn't vomiting either.
Then, I thought I had appendicitis, but appendix pain is supposed to be more on the side. Mine was right in the center.
It wasn't until a little later that I realized the pain could have been a herx (i.e. die-off) reaction, or at least some kind of adverse reaction, to apple cider vinegar. See, over the holiday, I unknowingly ate chicken that had been marinated in an Italian dressing that had apple cider vinegar as its second ingredient. Apple cider vinegar kills off yeast, parasites and God-knows-what-else so it's very possible the pain was from the release of endotoxins during die-off.
The stomach pain was so intense that I was laid up on the couch all day and this triggered very vivid flashbacks from one year ago. Even the sight of the tray table I had in front of me with half-sipped drinks, straws in each glass, seemed all-too-familiar. The cream of rice I ate...the daytime TV channels I watched...the overall malaise that I felt and inability to go outside of the house--it was like I was experiencing a downward spiral all over again, exactly one year later. I kept saying to myself, "This seriously can't be happening, exactly one year later. What are the odds?"
As I write this, my stomach is a little better so I'm hoping everything settles down eventually and that this is all simply a herx issue and nothing else major. But, man, talk about a sick little trick to be played on somebody who's experiencing their one-year Lymiversary. What can you do, though, but roll with it and don't start panicking!
Stomach issues aside, how am I doing one year after getting Lyme disease?
Not too bad, I suppose. In fact, I recently saw my (Lyme-literate) doctor, just about a week ago, and he gave me a stellar report. According to the orthomolecular machine he uses, my body now requires about 70 percent less vitamins and herbs than it did at the end of January. Even better, many of the vitamins and herbs I took specifically for liver function are no longer needed. One of these herbs is milk thistle, which means my liver is officially "cleaned out".
This is all good news. But I'm still far from being back to normal.
The biggest issue is still physical stamina. For the past month or so, I've been going up to the local high school's track to do workouts, though when I say "workout", I mean walk around the track, no more than twice. In fact, I've found that I literally can't walk more than twice around the track, which is a quarter of a mile in length so this means I can't walk more than a half a mile at a time. Even walking around the track a full two times is too much for me so I usually do about one and a half laps. There is a football field in the middle so I do one lap, then a half a lap, cut across the field and then I'm done, that's all she wrote.
I've even tried jogging at the track but it was brief and I mean very brief, probably for no longer than five seconds. Judging by how I felt after, I realized jogging any longer than five seconds or just jogging in general would be a total disaster. It made me feel vertigo and I had trouble walking in a balanced manner. Three hours later, I also felt gross, like really gross. Terror set in. I thought I may pass out but the feeling eventually passed, thankfully.
So running definitely isn't in the cards right now, which I'm ok with. Walking for a third of a mile or so without dying afterwards is pretty good considering where I was just about a year ago. Really, I'm one of the lucky ones and I need to be grateful, even though I still mourn the loss of my former self.
Along with the improvements in walking, another milestone has been my ability to drive longer distances. Just a few days ago, I drove on the highway for the first time in more than a year. This is a big deal because I've felt so cooped up for so long. I've been in a weird bubble of a twilight zone, so isolated and so alienated. Driving on the highway made me feel free again.
Since I'm able to walk and drive further, I've been generally more out and about in the world. Just the other night, I went out to see the local fireworks display and let me tell you: I was very apprehensive about doing this, mainly because I knew a significant deal of walking would be involved. The usual tradition is for me to meet up with my friends at one of their houses, which is, I believe, maybe a half a mile or so from where the fireworks go off, drink a few beers, then walk to the fireworks. I knew that, this year, however, I would not be able to do this walk. I'd probably be able to make it to the fireworks ok, but then I'd be dead to the world and I'd be unable to get back.
So I hung out at my friend's house as usual but then I had to drive as close to the fireworks as I could possibly get. I didn't think I'd be able to park very close, but I still thought I'd be clos(er) than my friend's house. As it turned out, the closest I could park was the nearby train station. I still wasn't sure if this was close enough for me, but I decided to take the risk and go for the walk anyway. Would I regret it? I hoped not.
Let me tell you: that walk was a very lonely one, because I was alone and I passed couples and friends and families and, well, I felt so alone. It would have been easy to feel sorry for myself but it was also kind of beautiful, and I don't know why. Maybe because it was a perspective from which I had never experienced the traditional fireworks night before. In fact, this has been a recurring theme throughout this past year: seeing life from a different perspective; seeing reality from a different perspective.
See, before Lyme, I was set in my ways, habitual with my routines and went through life in a kind of cruise control. It's amazing to experience how much more there is to reality, but you can only start experiencing it when something life-changing like Lyme slaps you out of your routines. Experiencing the fireworks from a different perspective was just one example of this*, but there have been several of these moments where I find myself in the same situations or the same physical space that I've always been in but I'm experiencing the present reality from a completely different perspective, or, to put it another way, it's like I'm in the same reality but tuning into a different frequency within that reality. What you end up realizing is that life can become so much more interesting and you don't even need to go anywhere different; all you need to do is tune into different frequencies.
See, before Lyme, I was set in my ways, habitual with my routines and went through life in a kind of cruise control. It's amazing to experience how much more there is to reality, but you can only start experiencing it when something life-changing like Lyme slaps you out of your routines. Experiencing the fireworks from a different perspective was just one example of this*, but there have been several of these moments where I find myself in the same situations or the same physical space that I've always been in but I'm experiencing the present reality from a completely different perspective, or, to put it another way, it's like I'm in the same reality but tuning into a different frequency within that reality. What you end up realizing is that life can become so much more interesting and you don't even need to go anywhere different; all you need to do is tune into different frequencies.
I still have a ways to go, that much is for sure. But I should really be grateful for the freedom I do have right now. A broken life is better than no life at all. In fact, sometimes the broken life is preferable to the perfect life because it's from the brokenness that we grow and become a stronger soul. I actually recently wrote a poem about this very topic, so I shall close with this poem:
SQUEEZE OUT EVERY LAST DROP
The way I see it
SQUEEZE OUT EVERY LAST DROP
The way I see it
You can have an imperfect life
A broken life
One that is a fucking nightmare at times
Or you can have nothing
I choose the broken life
That's better than choosing the nothing
And even if there's an afterlife
And I believe there is one
There's still only one Matt Burns
Ever
So I figure
It's best to squeeze out every last drop of him
And see what comes of it
*I was recently at a park that I formerly used to run in but, this time, I was forced to walk a minimal distance and then sit down on a bench. Sitting on the bench, I looked across the park and saw the tree line that was moving and swaying a bit from the wind. The wind carried fragments of sound to my ears, like a little girl giggling in the distance, as well as the echoed sound of a basketball bouncing in a nearby court. I don't think I had ever been so tuned into my present reality than I was at that very moment. Lyme forced me to slow down, sit my ass on a bench and tune in.
*I was recently at a park that I formerly used to run in but, this time, I was forced to walk a minimal distance and then sit down on a bench. Sitting on the bench, I looked across the park and saw the tree line that was moving and swaying a bit from the wind. The wind carried fragments of sound to my ears, like a little girl giggling in the distance, as well as the echoed sound of a basketball bouncing in a nearby court. I don't think I had ever been so tuned into my present reality than I was at that very moment. Lyme forced me to slow down, sit my ass on a bench and tune in.
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