How Long Until I Get Better?

Will I be one of the ones that gets rid of this disease completely and fully without ever having to treat it again?  Or will I fight low levels of it the rest of my life?  To be honest, I have been swallowing vitamins for years (like 35 of them a day) before I knew I had lyme.  I just knew something was terribly, terribly wrong with my incredibly fantastic body that had served me well all my life.  Everything was falling apart.  And vitamins did help.  A lot.  But the anxiety was so dominant and still there with moodiness.  The 5htp and Tyrosine really did help ALOT but the anxiety would still come on then and again...albeit nothing like when it first came on!  However, it was incredibly strong when I began treating with herbs.  In fact, the depression was so strong too.  I felt like I would NEVER get better.  That was the resounding thought and feeling.  I would ask my husband "Do you think I will get better?  Do you think I will ever get better?"  He would say "Yes, I think you will get better".  Just having another's vote of confidence meant something to me.  It helped keep the faith.  The fact that all hell broke loose when I started taking the herbs that targeted Lyme and Bartonella was most likely proof that I was killing something and eventually get better.  And I have.  So much better.  But still today, I ask, how long until I get better?  I am on the tinidazole pulse...this is my 4th pulse so basically when I have finished it I will have completed about 2 months of tinidazole (58 days at 1000mg a day).  So maybe I am herxing right now.  Maybe this feeling is just the tinidazole killing off the Lyme and the feeling and thought process I have in my heart is a shadow of the storm that once overtook my heart when first starting to treat the Lyme Disease with the herbs.  Last night, I had a bit of insomnia...had a hard time getting comfortable and to sleep and then I awoke for an hour between 3 and 4 with a RLS-y feeling in my joints and the need to get up, cool down (I felt hot) and so I went and slept downstairs on the couch (after staying up for about 45 minutes and writing).  Anyways.  So right now.  This is probably a herx.  And happy to say.  A lot better of one that I have had in the past.  But still, I am bored taking these dang pills everyday.  Nice, I know.  They are helping me but it just gets monotonous and I want it to be over.  I want to be better.  I want to be healed.  Forever.  But I carry on, taking my medicine.  It has been about 7 years since I got ill.  How I hate the sound of that.  I wish it was just 1 year, and I was where I am today and it hadn't taken me that long to figure out what was going on (or see what God was trying to tell me when he sent a friend next door who had Lyme and kept telling me about it....or when I went to a doctor and she mentioned Lyme Disease and it took me a YEAR to take the test because I just couldn't believe I had it!  A year because I don't remember a bulls-eye rash and that is all I knew Lyme to do.  Ugh.  Me and my thick head!  Makes me wonder what else I am being so blind to that God is trying to show me.  It is all right there, but it takes getting through our thick head, and our blind eyes, to finally see...at least it does for me!)  So I am praying that He guides me with treatments and of course, if it never does go away...gives me the contentment to walk through it.  But...BUT...I am still believing for complete eradication! 

This time around - Artemesinin

I am on my 3rd day of taking 1200mg of artemesinin in 3 divided doses.  The last time I took a high dose or artemesinin like that my muscles were so, so, so sore.  This time around.  They are not!  So that is good news.  My muscles still hurt (or skin) when you push certain tender spots especially so I am not saying I am free and clear but those intense muscle pain and intense fatigue is not happening.  This is my 3rd time (or maybe 4th) of adding in artmesinin to treat potential babesia.  The first time - the dose was so low, and my anxiety was so intense from Bartonella, that I really didn't notice in anything when taking artemesinin at 100mg 3x a day.  I did note a little fatigue though that first time.  The 2nd and (maybe 3rd time) of taking it, I took much higher doses like I am taking now and I had intense muscle soreness pain in my big muscles (glutes and quads).  This time, I don't have that pain at all. Go figure.  I haven't been treating Babesia at all this time around since starting treatment in August so I am really not sure what to make of it.  Maybe if I continued Artemesinin for a week or so they muscles might start hurting?  I don't know.  Anyways, I am happy I am not having muscle pain.

Another thing, I have been going for 20 minute walks every day.  I absolutely love getting outside in the fresh air.  Foot Pain and Anxiety and Lethargy have been the major road blocks to that historically for me (never before Lyme Disease but always after Lyme Disease).  Every time I would start to exercise, inevitably at 3 weeks in I woulds suffer debilitating anxiety and absolute depression that would last and last and last and last.  So far, I have been exercising very gently, and this has not happened.  I was reading another persons blog who has lyme and talks about how they want to be better than they are and they are running like 2-4 times a week at 2-4 miles a pop.  Honestly, that is my end dream.  I mean if I could run 2-4 times a week at 2-4 miles a pop I would be over the moon ecstatic.  Literally, that would be my dream come true.  And so that makes me realize that I am so much further behind than they are.  Right now, when I walk, the bottom of my heels hurt, and so that is still there.  I am thinking about going to a Podiatrist and asking for a bone scan or mri of my foot just to see if I have adequate blood flow or bone loss on the foot.  I am also thinking of taking the herbal tea Boneset that Stephan Buhner recommends as well as a formula for strengthening bones by Jarrow called Bone-up that has ground up calf bone, calcium, magnesium, vitamin D and vitamin K in it.  So that is where I am at right now.  And...I am still so grateful all the time...that I am not dealing with anxiety.  Yes, there is ALOT ahead of me but I am SO much better than where I was.  Ahead of me...heel bone pain, muscle tenderness, weight loss, lethargy gone and of course the lyme herxing of stabbing pains that I get when I am on tinidazole.  Today, I will be starting my 3rd pulse of Tinidazole.  Wish me luck!