Riding Shotgun

"If you're going through hell, keep on moving, face that fire, walk right through it, you might get out before the devil even knows your there"- Rodney Atkins

While it is 10 pm and I should be sleeping my brain is in overdrive and I just took a bunch of pills so I need to be up for a little bit. What a perfect time for an update. I'm done saying that this will be a quick update. I think you know by now, they never are. I could go on forever it seems. Now, where to begin...

I'll start by letting you know that I got a 30 day extension at work. At the end of the 30 days I have to go through the whole doctors note routine again and we will go from there. Options are really slim as far as work goes. The bottom line is my "recovery" is not cooperating with the City's time line. For any one who knows about this disease that comes as no surprise. When does Lyme ever cooperate? Maybe never. Regardless, I am blessed to have another 30 days and I am really letting God take control. I am feeling more and more comfortable with the fact that I am giving up control. I'm letting Jesus take the wheel and as much as I like to drive, it's not so bad riding shotgun on this road trip. I think I am learning to sit back and relax.

Completely surprised but my sauna came a few weeks ago just like they said. After hearing some nightmare stories from some friends I wasn't convinced it could be here in less than week from when it was ordered but sure enough it was. Because I was finishing up my last week of antibiotics before my 2 month break I wasn't the first one to use it. That was ok I was just so excited to have it. My husband got the job of putting it together. It actually was a fairly quick process  and with in just a few hours of it being delivered my husband climbed in and started to sweat. Now he has never used one and I had a feeling he was going to love it. I was right. I almost wonder if he loves the sauna more than me. Just kidding. Can I just say though, regardless of your health, if you can ever afford to buy one do it. The health benefits alone are worth it. It is just relaxing and makes you feel good, well unless you are killing bugs like me then sometimes not so good but I just highly recommend you look into them. I don't think you will regret it. As a side note the weight loss part is great, my husband is dropping pounds and loving it. So since stopping the antibiotics, starting the new medicine, and using the sauna I must admit it has been a little rougher than I thought. It is so hard to tell what is really going on. I have been really sick to my stomach the past few days and I am almost sure that that is the new medicine. Some of the other symptoms though are hard to tell. Is it a herx because the heat from the sauna is killing bugs, is it just part of detoxing, is it a relapse from no abx. I am not looking forward to starting the abx up again. I'm really scared of what type of herx I might have. There is not much more I can go through at home before I am sure I would end up in the ER. As any lyme person will tell you, you want to avoid that at all costs. It's usually not worth it. On the other hand though, if you think you are dying what choice do you have? I am not going to worry about and if I'm truly letting Jesus take the wheel, that means I'm letting Him drive down that road too.

Speaking of symptoms and herxing the heart issues have been fairly steady. Nothing super crazy but fairly consistent and enough to drive me nuts. I did an echo last week which was normal. (No surprise there) I did the stress test on the treadmill today. That test kicked my but and I had to come home and go to sleep. I did better than some of my other tests so that is a plus. However, in my book it was still an epic fail. I managed to get my heart rate up to 190 in about 7 minutes. The cardiologist said I did fine. I exceeded my maximum heart rate by a little doing moderate exercise. Not bad. Not bad? I'm WALKING up a hill and within 7 minutes my heart is maxed it, I'm weak in the knees and I can't breathe and that's not bad. Don't forget, this test was done with me on two different medications to control my heart rate. Needless to say I am still very frustrated by the whole thing. "Inappropriate Sinus Tach" seems to be the consensus but it still drives me nuts. I am just praying that when we get the lyme and co-infections in remission that this issue will resolve itself for the most part. The other crazy part of this is the shortness of breath. You really feel like you are crazy when you feel like it is very hard to breath, you can't talk in complete sentences and your o2 saturation is 100%. Just confuses me to no end. I just need to follow up with some blood work and we will go from there. I have been working on my "heart breathing". I need to do it more often but I always do it in the sauna. Focus on my breathing, then breathing through my heart, then happy thoughts...which leads me to the last thing for the night.

Once again some amazing things have happened in the last day or two that just remind me how blessed I am. I'm not ready to share all of the details but God is doing some things behind the scenes so to speak and my husband and I both believe that what has gone on in just the last 24 hours is part of God's way of letting us know we are on the right track. I think some big things are in store for us and I can't wait. It is so interesting how God's timing works as well. I had a very rough end to my work week last week with some frustrations over something I felt I deserved that I didn't get only to see someone else turnaround and get it. I literally had to leave the office before I said something I would regret. In my husbands usual style, he reminded me I was wasting time being mad over something I couldn't change. I knew he was right but, but, but, well I still wanted to be upset. Long story short, I got over it, and am so happy that things went the way they did. One, I found out that the other person did truly need what they asked for. Second, if that situation would have worked in my favor then it wouldn't have allowed God to bless us like He has. I'm still learning day by day. I'm still human and get upset and think life is unfair sometimes but in the end I'm realizing I can only see one small part of the picture. Someone else has a much better view...

In closing I just wanted to send out an extra big THANK YOU and hugs to all of my amazing friends for your support. You know who you are, and God has put you in my life for a reason. I am so thankful for each and everyone of you.  Just in case you forgot...there are a couple of ways you can support me and family during this time. First you can pray for us. I don't underestimate the power of prayer and I could use all the prayers I can get. Second we would obviously accept your financial donations. You can do that from the blog by clicking on my "go fund me" link. You can buy some of my photography from my fototime link on my blog. Lastly you can watch the documentary "Under Our Skin" which is now available on Netflix to watch instantly. Thanks for following along. I'd love to hear from you. (Just so you know financially where we stand...we owe the doctors office roughly $1300 to catch up on my IV's we have done so far. If the 2 months off/on plan works and we are pretty much done after that then we still need to come up with about $5000. I just feel better letting you know what the costs really are.) Have a good night.
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