First Time at our Friday Night Group

The following is a pivotal story for both of us in knowing God's love and power. The night spoken of rocked both our lives.

This is the night we realized God takes action.

You've heard about our Friday night church group. Mike, the leader, asked me to write out the story of the first time we went. This is it.
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One night in February of 2008, my husband and I went to our Friday night group for the first time. We came straight from the funeral home, where we'd dropped off our son's body to be cremated. He was our second child - and the second we'd lost.

We came in after the meeting had started, both my arms around my husband's teddy bear, and his arm around me. We sat down and half-listened to the speaker, a woman who, of all things, was telling the story of holding her son while he died.

I don't remember much from the meeting, or even from the surrounding months. I came in shattered, not only having just lost our baby, but in the worst part of Lyme Disease. It'd been 3 months since I'd had a moment without pain. Even before we knew something was wrong with the baby, I was out of my head from hurting.

I remember Mike kneeling in front of me, talking to me quietly. He was asking what was going on. I couldn't speak, and my husband answered for us.

I've remarked a few times since that neither of us ever told the group that we thought I'd die. Though each time I've mentioned that, I've heard, "Oh I know! We could tell."

Mike asked something about whether it was ok for the group to pray for us, and put their hands on us.

Then I remember having about 6 hands on me. One was my husband's. Their hands made my body hurt, but I didn't care. I hurt worse than my body did.

I heard things in that prayer that I never had before. They said they believed Jesus could heal me. They demanded bad things to get off me. I remember so little, but I know it brought comfort. I remember thinking that if I did die, maybe these people would help my husband.

When they were done praying, and a few were left kneeling, talking to me, something made me laugh. I remember Mike turning from near-by and saying, "You're laughing!" I was rather surprised myself.

The next afternoon, I realized that my pain level had dropped enough to notice. That would gradually continue until, about 4 months later, I felt good 23 hours a day. The prayer had been a turning point.

One year later, I'm healthy and hopeful, closer to God than I knew was possible, the group is our family, and they're teaching us how to pray.

An even BETTER Lyme Story

I've just put "Bill's Blog" under "Sites We Frequent."

It's a new blog. Find the December 30, 2008 post. It seems it might be the first one posted.

It's the brief story of a woman who was healed, overnight, of Lyme Disease. She was apparently right in the middle of the worst part of it. Be sure to watch the video. It's the main part of the story.

It's my story with the following changes: No dream. Legally blind off and on instead of light sensitive. And the overnight difference I got was a major pain drop-off that started a multi-month healing (rather than full healing overnight.) This woman, too, was even pregnant with Lyme.

Oh, and hey, from the blog, click on "Home." There's excellent info to be found. And it's fun!

Same link as "Bill's Blog."

My Lyme Doc

Coherence may not be happening here. Work with me.

So that their names won't show up here when they're Google searched, the man you know as my Lyme doctor is "Doc 1." We also have "Doc 2."

We went to Doc 1's yesterday. I signed in and sat down with D. The receptionist then asked me to fill out a few papers on a clip board. I took it and sat down, only to see that it was paperwork for a new doc, Doc 2, who had started working with my Lyme doc. So I took it back and pointed out that I was here for Doc 1 instead. No big deal, right?

"Oh. Doc 1 passed away. I'm sorry. Is this the first you heard?"
*mouth-open stare*
"He had a heart attack about 7 weeks ago. We sent the info to everyone, but some of the papers came back to us."
"Uhhh. So I'm seeing [hold up clipboard]?"
"Yeah. I'm sorry you didn't know..."
*head nod* "Thank you."

Suddenly needing to be ready to meet and work with a new doctor, I held off the crying part until we drove away 5 hours later. But I skipped a lot of the paperwork I was supposed to be filling out, given that I couldn't even fill out the part about when my birthday is.

So now we have Doc 2. He's extremely nice, also a Lyme specialist. He'd gone over my charts the previous day and was totally ready. We got the Lyme part taken care of, much like we normally would with Doc 1. But he also had a few suggestions as to what might play into my having a baby - so we added a lot of blood tests. And we'll go back sooner than usual - 5 weeks this time - so we can go over all those results.

I had a bit of trouble with the IV. Typically, I get one stick. Blood gets drawn from there, then the IV goes into it. But with all we drew yesterday, my blood clotted before we had it all. So we went with the other arm, which once again clotted. My hand had nothing plump, so we went back to the original arm, in a different vein. Got it done though. Got a Vitamin C IV yesterday.

Vit C pulls down your blood sugar, so D went to Wendy's and helped me eat one-handed during this. In fact, it was in the 50's when we left and I felt bad until I was asleep.

As usual, I had good conversations with the other Lymies - all of us sitting in recliners, getting our various IV's. One, in fact, lives in the next burb over, where D's office is. We exchanged contact info.

(Sidenote, but with all of us lasso'd to our recliners, D runs around opening drink bottles, passing out chocolate-covered nuts, and taking Wendy's orders. He's well-liked.)

So all that, and a $500 bag of pills, and we're driving home. And finally can cry. We'd had a relationship with Doc 1 for well over a year. Nice man. Always laughing about my 2-mile list of questions. Jovial. Last time we were there, he sat in one of the empty recliners talking to us for a while.

We were surprised, months ago, when an appointment was cancelled at the last moment. Doc 1 had needed surgery to work on a heart problem - a birth defect of some sort. But we were relieved at the re-scheduled appointment to hear him say he was feeling a lot better. Apparently it was just a few days after we saw him last that he had a heart attack. He was somewhere near his late 50's.

Being a doctor is a good thing to begin with, but to specialize in Lyme is to be a pioneer. Professionally, it comes with a lot of risk - political things. And you can't just go off the teachings of others. With Lyme, the doctors are still in the middle of figuring it out. Similar to treating cancer I guess. How ironic to spend your career saving lives, only to die young.

There's a lot of us that'll miss him.

Blood Results

Spoke with my Lyme doc yesterday.

The notoriously inaccurate blood results came back. Doc says my immune system is working, though I could possibly have a co-infection. (Lyme often comes with friends.) Like one of our friends said last night, "I have a 40% chance of being better." Totally accurate. I sure FEEL better though! Glory to God for it!

The one real symptom I have left, quivering muscles, could be due to my too-low magnesium. I'd stopped taking it, but am back on. So we'll see.

Next appointment is August 13.

Lyme Update

We drove to MI yesterday (to the Lyme doc). We left here at 4:50 AM to get there for my first appt, which was at 9:30 - 8:30 our time. Groan. However...

The day went well. We were able to find out I have another of the tick-borne diseases; ehrlichiosis - both types. Obviously, this won't make my symptoms worse than they've been since I contracted it. It just means we can treat it better. That's why I consider this good.

We also were able to refine what supplements I need to be taking a bit, and get me started on homeopathic drop-thingies. I'll be starting those today, but am a smidge apprehensive. You're supposed to drop them under your tongue, and the solution is 25% alcohol. Ew.

Also, I got started on an IV yesterday. We'll do it everytime we go - though I'll be able to do even more starting next time. Yesterday, what I did was something for de-toxing. From now on, I'll do that plus a ton of Vitamin C. We're debating how to do the IVs more often - find someone here or even learn to do them at home. We'll see. (We're also trying to figure out how to do infrared saunas here.)

Next appt is June 11.

(I AM feeling tremendously better. I've even had 8-hour time-spans of NO symptoms lately. Remember how I was feeling in February? This is amazing! Thank you, Abba!)
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The Spicy Cheese Soup last week seemed to go over well, except that it was really spicy. So what if they WERE serranos? I fried them before I put them in! *evil giggle*

We still have 4 baby fish and the turtledoves. However, 2 sparrows have taken up residence on the other side of the air conditioner now - essentially, 2 bird nests in our bedroom.

Turtledoves are decidedly more pleasant roommates than sparrows. The first time one of the sparrows saw me, she puffed up her feathers and jumped up and down snarling and shrieking (I swear). They've gotten no more amiable since.

God Still Works

Howdy, Folks!

This is a puzzle D and I just finished - 1,000 pieces, about 2 x 2 1/2 feet. It took us about a month. Ten minutes to an hour here and there and voila! This started as a compromise between D wanting to play board games and me wanting to sit and talk for hours. Worked out beautifully!

God Still Works
In other news, I'm feeling better to the extent that I'm living like a normal person again! I'm back to being able to keep my daily routine that I'd set up a couple months before getting sick. One routine at a time, the house is looking like I'm taking care of it again. And somewhere in the 3 months of not always even being able to cook our food, I've lost my perfectionism. That should be beneficial to the rest of my life and will likely make me far less annoying to D and our kids. Glory be, I got my life back!

Getting deeper into this topic... Being normal again is a direct result of being prayed for this past Sunday. A group of about 5 gathered around me and prayed for me - pretty well informing my body it was just flat fine now. And by golly God answered! I'd (basically) been sick for 5 months up through Sunday, was prayed for, and Monday I was the H of 5 months ago again. This is Wednesday. I'm convinced.

One thing about it though: Remember the man whose eyes Jesus healed? The one who Jesus had to heal again because the first time hadn't been thorough. (The guy that said people looked like trees.)

Well, I don't understand that. And it seems like there must be a bigger explanation than "Jesus couldn't get it right." Nevertheless, I seem to be like that man. I am absolutely healed. D could confirm that. But I seem to be in "people look like trees" mode. There are mild residual pains that show up briefly, one of us prays about, and they vanish again.

To the best of my shallow understanding, this is just part of the spiritual war going on every moment. God heals me and Satan dares to challenge Him.

This has really been an amazing journey the last few days as D and I watch what my body does in response to ours and others prayers. I really wish that those of you close enough to us to bother reading this blog could be here to also be filled with wonder. At the same time, it's been awesome getting to just travel the road and learn with my dear hubby. At the least, I figure I can tell y'all about it here.

(Another note on this topic: I have had this happen before. I had a couple years worth of back and nerve pain that was caused by 3 herniated discs. It was a daily annoyance/problem for all that time. There came a point where I was fed up with it though. I knew at that time that God could and did heal people instantly as a result of prayer. Not having anyone else that believed that to pray for me, I did it myself. That was just as I fell asleep and within 5 minutes of waking up, it dawned on me, "Hey! It doesn't hurt! Nothing hurts!" That was at least 5 years ago. I'm still fine. In all that time, there have been no more than a half dozen instances where it hurt. They were all brief and mild.)

I am still treating the Lyme - no one panic. In fact, I put a ticker on the right side of the blog counting me down to the loveliness of not being on a synthetic med (ew.) Too, yesterday I ordered 12 8oz. boxes of soy noodles. That's right - nothin' but soy beans. They have got to be better than the spaghetti squash I tried to make mac n' cheese with last time! I'm sincerely hoping that carbs can re-enter my life at some point, even if in small amounts. Meanwhile, I'm counting my blessings that I can eat this way since I do need to. And I'm trying soy pasta.
Hehe - and we all thought D wouldn't eat many things.

Details
Tonight is our second-to-last marriage course/date thing. The last one next week will be a potluck.

Tomorrow night is the first meeting of our new house group. We're with a lot of the same people, but we're shaking things up a bit. I think we have about 15. Fortunately, D and I'll be driving to the same friends' house that we've been going to already. How convenient!

And half of you already know this, but my brother has gotten word that he'll be stateside again around February and have a month-long leave around March.

Toodles. Have a lovely.

Where I've Been

To April and others who wonder where I've been,

I've been sick! Technically, there's more to the story. But the lack of posting can pretty well be blamed on major fatigue. I got Lyme, am now being treated, and am very slowly improving. My suspicion is that I won't post much for a while. But if you guys (thanks for the reminder April), post comments asking me where I am or something, I'll send a little update like this.

I shall return! (after maybe 3 more weeks of sleeping)

Thanks to all who wondered where I was,

Moi

And here's a picture - 'cause they're fun.