May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month, and as such, I'm sharing parts of my own story throughout May.
In case you missed it, here's PART 1 of my Lyme (healing) story: https://adelecole.com/blog/33562/my-lyme-healing-story-how-it-all-started
We pick up today with Part 2 of my Lyme healing story. This is the crazy part, where I’m not really getting proper Lyme treatment, but yet, I start to find my healing path through all kinds of twists and turns.
So I had just gotten an actual Lyme diagnosis and just finished a month of oral antibiotics with NO (or minimal) improvements. Now my gut was wrecked, I wasn’t “better” magically, and my well-meaning family doc turfed me off to specialists to help manage my symptoms.
Ultimately, this next phase of my journey led to a laundry list of diagnoses, mostly autoimmune and rheumatological. They included (but certainly weren’t limited to): fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, psoriasis and eczema, psoriatic arthritis, sacroiliac joint dysfunction, patella femoral syndrome, headaches and migraines, Raynaud’s phenomenon, mental health issues, and I was being worked up for vasovagal issues and irritable bowel syndrome. All of this was NEW to me and prominent in about a 2-year time span.
What’s interesting about these many diagnoses is that they brought some amount of relief to me, as well as a sense of ownership of my health in a very good way. See, as I was still sick - though no longer fully bed-ridden - I mustered up the energy to take my health into my own hands to a degree. I was still a child but found myself researching, asking questions, and figuring out some diagnoses that seemed to “fit the bill” for my deterioration in health that I couldn’t seem to overcome.
My mom was also a key player and example to me during this time, as she too was linking arms with family friends with medical training and learning about advocacy herself, in order to better help me. All-in-all, with what we both learned, I was able to work with my Rheumatologist and family doctor to start getting some diagnoses on the table that made sense (or so I thought!) with what I was physically experiencing.
None of us realized that Lyme and coinfection were the main culprits in all that I was experiencing.
Even though these other diagnoses weren’t really on the right track or ACTUAL answers for my health problems/needs, getting to this point had taught me valuable lessons about empowerment and advocacy that I would carry with me into adulthood.
In the meantime, we moved forward the best we could, looking now for alternative answers for symptom management and improved quality of life. Across my mom’s path came some VERY timely answers - two main vehicles for healing that got me to a functional place for the first time in nearly 3 years.
- Myofasical release. This form of bodywork requires specialized training and we happened to find one of the best practitioners who lived right near us. (We are still friends to this day, in fact.) She changed my entire life in the first session I had at the age of 15 (20 years ago now). I left that session feeling a sense of healing. In fact, the first words out of my mouth to my mom were, “I can breathe again.” I was getting oxygen and healing throughout my body - something I hadn’t experienced for years and didn’t even realize it! When my mom saw how alive I looked after my first session, she burst into tears. That’s how drastic this treatment was for me. Over the years, my provider also incorporated craniosacral and lymphatic drainage therapies into my sessions, and I continued to see her until she retired, 20 years after my very first session. I will continue this type of healing treatment for life.
- Homeopathy and holistic care. When I say we left no stone unturned, we really did try not to! So we landed on trying an MD who turned homeopath and boy did this pay off! While he wasn’t a Lyme Literate Provider, he was the first provider to look at my WHOLE self and WHOLE health picture. His investigation and lifestyle recommendations, along with select homeopathy and repairing deficiencies and “missing links” in my health started to impart healing into my day-to-day life. In fact, it was this experience directly that opened my mind to the possibilities of gut healing, diet as medicine, and alternative medicine in general. This is a mindset I have taken with me ever since, even though my carrier as a registered nurse.
So even though my Lyme wasn’t DIRECTLY being addressed at this point in my healing, I was learning valuable healing lessons and experiencing the truth about healing, despite not fully “getting” it yet at this point - that healing is multi-faceted, never linear, and definitely about the WHOLE person.
Stay tuned for PART 3 coming next week, where I take the lessons I’ve been learning in my young years as I move into adulthood and see what lay ahead for my career, relationships, and life.
While you're waiting to hear more of my journey, join the best holistic Lyme healing community out there right here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/lymeyandcrunchy
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