Tag Archives: meditation

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Update… Aborted. Again.

I’ve been trying to write an update for so long. It’s been 5 months since my last one. There’s been so much that I wanted to document, that it started to feel like a Herculean task to catch up and my symptoms have been such a rollercoaster, that I never seem to find an opportunity. When I have some respite, I cook, bathe, deal with insurance and appointments, tackle laundry, play with my dogs, sort through finances etc. Aaannd… I just hit a wall. Just like that. As I typed, I could feel my brain clogging up. I picture all the little ATP molecules grimacing, gasping and dragging their feet like the characters at the end of Stephen King’s story, The Long Walk, dragging themselves along until collapse is inevitable. It’s a shocking feeling. Mentally, I was really clear for about an hour this morning. Felt like I could write. Dreamed up grand plans for my day (make granola! call a family member! blog post!). I answered a few emails, talked to my husband a bit and then wrote this… And it’s gone.

My neurological symptoms are horrific. “Brain fog” is the best of it. I’d take lack of concentration, not being able to find words, memory problems any day over what I’ve been experiencing this year. It feels like physically–physiologically–my brain grinds to a halt. My eyelids get heavy, my vision gets blurry, my ears roar, I start slurring. As I’m writing this, it’s getting worse and there’s no pushing through. My body feels okay, my stiffness, weakness and pain levels are manageable this morning, but I can’t push through this neuro stuff. Even if my body feels capable of going to the park, my brain insists on being in bed with ear plugs and eye shades. I can’t even watch dull tv or listen to a meditation. It’s incredibly frustrating and quite alarming. And, in a clinical way, I am fascinated by the trajectory of my symptoms over the past four years.

Year 1 was horrific viral, malarial, drenching sweat, nighttime hell and constant chills. That ended for the most part in Year 2 and became predominately “nightly flu” and pain, pain and more pain. Year 3 was the best of times and the worst of times: a bedbound, suicidal winter (when I finally got the permanent ME/CFS sore throat) turned into a much more stable spring and summer after my pain eased up. Year 4 started in a deep, reactive crash and became the year of crippling neurological symptoms. Year 5 (which started at the beginning of this month) so far is all over the place. My main focus is to work on the symptoms that have been with me throughout all of these years: sleep dysfunction, headaches, hypotension and infections. Plus, social contact would be good.

I have to power down now. The long-awaited update will come soon, I hope. I have so much to say.

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Poisoning Myself.

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Three days ago, after having Cromolyn Sodium in my cupboard for 19 weeks, I finally decided I was stable enough to add a new drug. Cromolyn was originally used as an inhaled anti-iflammatory to treat allergic- and exercise-induced asthma. The oral version of Cromolyn has been used more recently to treat mastocytosis and mast cell disorders. It is a liquid that comes in ampules and is mixed into water. The doctor who prescribed it for me is the same one that diagnosed me with MCAS, but he didn’t seem to know much about Cromolyn. The pharmacy knew nothing. I had to go online and ask the people in my mast cell Facebook group for details and then call the pharmacist and explain exactly what the drug was. I am so thankful for the knowledge of these groups and Cromolyn seemed to help far more people than it harmed. It also seemed pretty innocuous — I only talked to a few people who had major side effects and they were things I don’t typically experience, like itching and nausea.

Of course, there’s always a part of me that is looking for the magic pill. Imagine I started this drug and my mast cells calmed down and symptoms I didn’t even realise were caused by them disappeared! … But, it still took me almost 5 months to convince myself to take it. It wasn’t until my bowels went into hibernation that I decided to take the plunge. A few weeks ago, motility stopped, gastroparesis reared its ugly, bloated head and everything ceased functioning in my intestines. No movement, not even a fart, and mega doses of magnesium and vitamin C weren’t doing anything. Cromolyn can help these internal inflammation symptoms and I had high hopes.

The dose I was meant to take was eight ampules in a day — two 4 times a day. The doctor never mentioned to work up slowly and some people in my online group were able to start at full dose. I wanted to be careful because we’re talking about my ridiculously hyper-sensitive body, after all, but I was pretty confident that I’d be fine. So, the first day, I took 1/3 of an ampule in the morning. The next day, I took 2/3 of an ampule in the morning. All seemed fine, so, that night before bed, I took 3/4 of an ampule. At 5 in the morning, I woke up sick sick sick. So sick. Sicker than I’ve been in years, maybe. Sick like my original sickness. Malarial. Encephalo-. Shaking all over, chilled, sweating feverishly, head pounding, stiff neck, muscles cramping, throat constricted, barely able to lift my arm or walk to the bathroom. Oh god, the FEAR. I’d rather die than go back to this. I felt like an ex-con in a movie choosing death-by-cop rather than go back to jail. My mind was like a panicked, caged animal, looking for a way out, falling in and out of fever dreams where I was screaming for my mother over and over again. I’d rather the “nightly flu” that I used to get. I’d rather the ME monster that slams me down with massive, pummeling hands, but I now know will release me eventually if I hold very still for a while. I think I’d even rather be back in December, 2013, when I called on all of you angels to get me through what I thought might be permanent bedboundness.

I felt poisoned. There’s no other way to describe it. I took my temperature: 98.4 degrees. My blood pressure was 80/55 (normal for me). My blood sugar was 80. Not much I could do but wait it out. I lay in bed the whole day yesterday, meditating, deep breathing away the fear of permanent relapse to an acceptable distance. I have a painful burn on my hand that is taking a while to heal and I kept falling into dreams where the burn was causing sepsis. That’s what it felt like — a systemic infection — I’d wake up panting and quiet my mind. I’m good at doing that during waking hours, but, in my dreams… I’m always silently screaming.

I feel a bit better today, but still didn’t sleep. I haven’t had a headache in a long time, believe it or not, and the pain is brutal. My muscles are aching and I feel swollen. The fear has dissipated to frustration. I’m frustrated with myself for trying another drug. I was doing so well. I had a lot of firsts the last few weeks (I’ll post about that later, but here’s a teaser: first time in a store, first road trip, first time on a beach in two years!) and then I couldn’t leave well enough alone and trust that my body was slowly, but surely, helping itself. I’m frustrated with myself for not going slower. I could have ramped up the dose over a full month, but I’m always so impatient. I’m frustrated that I’ve lost the potential help of Cromolyn. That was probably the worst reaction I’ve ever had apart from anaphylaxis, so I’ll never touch it again. I’m not even willing to try again going much slower, so I’ll never know if it could have helped. And that makes me frustrated because it was so hard to get it and it’s incredibly expensive and it’s such a waste. I have a friend who can take it off my hands, but, if I ever wanted to try it again, I’m out of luck because I don’t have insurance to cover it anymore.

And, in contrast to how I feel now, I realise how well I was doing. I was managing to do things every day — stand in the kitchen and cook for an hour, have conversations easier, wash and dry my hair without a thought. This weekend we have one last stab at summer — two days of high 70s and low 80s — and I was going to surprise our friends Z and J by going to their house on Vashon Island for the first time in years. I felt strong enough to do it and that was not even an option 6 months ago. Instead, I’ll barely be moving this weekend. But at least I’ll barely be moving in the garden, in the sun.

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June JuJu

I have had a bad backslide this month. It started with headaches in the first week of June, then bowel inflammation and bloating, then weakness, exhaustion and a constant buzzy/numb head… On the 10th, I had one day of terrible pain in all my joints: hips, shoulders, hands, wrists. On the 11th, I had a histamine reaction with my throat spot getting very itchy for the first time in ages, coupled with the internal fire that I call flushing. On the 13th, I had unusally bad blood pooling and swollen hands and feet. On the 14th, I woke up with the worst muscle pain I have had in probably over a year… full-body, every movement hurt, muscles I forgot existed… and it sent me into the emotional doldrums: I can’t do this anymore. What’s it all for? I can’t live like this. My whole life was useless. I never had a family, I never made a difference in the world, I worked and studied and worried for nothing because it was all for nothing and useless and life is meaningless blah blah blah… That was brought on by seeing an old friend’s holiday photos of beautiful people gallivanting in the sun with their beautiful children and their happy, youthful I-haven’t-aged-a-bit-in-the-last-23-years smiles. One should never look at Facebook when they are bedbound in extreme pain and it’s summer.

On the 15th, I realised the deadline for Social Security to receive my disability paperwork (work history and function report) was the next day and I panicked. I’d read the letter wrong and thought I had another week. It should have taken a week to do, but I had to cram it into 24 hours. They write on the form that it should take about an hour to fill out, which is hysterical. It took me about 10 solid hours. I had to research the jobs I had and how much I was paid back to 1997! I had to describe every position I held. I had to estimate things like how many hours a day I stooped, bent, knelt, sat, walked etc. For each position! Seriously? How many hours a day I bent?? For fuck’s sake. For all my restaurant jobs, it was fairly easy: I walked all day, every day. But, they wanted to know things like how many hours a day and days a week I worked. Well, some weeks it was 3 shifts, 10 hours a day and some days it was 14 hours a day and 7 days a week (when we were opening restaurants). I was that person who was writing in tiny letters in the margins, giving explanations and qualifiers that will never be read. They’d ask something like, “What did you do all day in this job?” and give me one line to answer. What didn’t I do all day? That would have been easier to answer. As COO, I did everything. They wanted to know how heavy objects were that I lifted: “What was the heaviest object you lifted? How much did the objects that you lifted most of the day weigh?” I wound up texting my friend from my old job: “How heavy do you think 3 of those dinner plates loaded with food were?” We were blessed with the heaviest plates in the industry and the heaviest food. Tex-Mex doesn’t leave any blank room on the plate.

For the function report, they asked the same questions different ways for 12 pages. Maybe they wouldn’t be the same answers with other illnesses, but with this one they are: “How has your social life been affected?” “How have your cooking habits changed?” “What household chores can you do?” “How have your hobbies and past times changed?” “What can’t you do now that you used to be able to do?” Over and over: I can’t do any of it anymore. All of it has changed. I was excited when I got to the question about dressing myself: Yes! Yes, I can do that!

So, the 15th and 16th turned into the familiar nightmarish feeling of deadlines and all-nighters. Oh, how many times did I leave all my assignments and studying to the last minute in college. It was my M.O. Always was, even in secondary school. I stayed up all night studying for my leaving cert (the final exam at the end of high school in Ireland) maths exam and then took a nap in the early hours of the morning and slept through it! (Side note to any young ones reading this: I thought the world was going to end. I was a perfectionist even then and, when they wouldn’t let me retake my exam, I thought my future was lost… I’d never get into the colleges I wanted to attend… it would be a black scar on my record for evermore… But, guess what, it made no difference in my life. You’ll be ok, no matter what the outcome of the leaving or the SATs or any of it. Life is much, much more.)

I put ear plugs in and sat secluded for hours upon hours trying to fill out the paperwork. My brain wasn’t working and I had to get my husband to help (“What symptoms do I have, honey?” “What hobbies do — did — I like to do?”). My hand was cramping and my vision was pretty much gone, so I went to bed and finished it the next day in a complete stupour of pain and nausea and bricked-ness. The SSA said that it was okay that it was late. I called 3 times to verify that and they kept saying it’ll be fine, so fingers crossed I didn’t screw myself.

On the 17th, I awoke in the middle of the night with an evil migraine, which is still lingering today. I have been chilled and achy and wired the last few days, trying to figure out if it is something I ate that caused the joint pain, muscle pain and migraine — is it because of all the histamine foods I have been adding in? — or is it just the unrelenting disease and the stress and overworked brain? Last night, I couldn’t get to sleep until 1am and I awoke at 5am with my heart galloping from a nightmare. I’ve been wide awake with my brain on fire ever since. Can’t deep breathe or meditate, can’t concentrate or be productive, can’t jump out of bed and tackle the day. Just have to lie here, my body a bee hive of activity and my eyes barely able to focus.

Chronic illness gods, I’m sorry I mentioned that something was working. How dare I?! Please give me some respite. I’ll be good.

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What I’m doing now that may or may not be making a difference.

This morning, I had a high resting heart rate of 67 bpm. Yesterday, by comparison, it was 56. Since I’ve been tracking my morning HR, it has been a fairly good predictor of how stable my body will remain throughout the day. I anticipate that today it will be a little more difficult to go up and down stairs, I’ll have to rest a bit more, my blood pressure might be lower and I’ll undoubtedly take fewer steps than my current norm. I can tell by how achy I was this morning. But, last night, while getting ready for bed, I was happy and hopeful. I was feeling like I could really get better enough to live again and I vowed to write a post today about all the things I do that may or may not be helping.

I’m a completely different person than I was over Christmas. I thought I might never talk properly again, walk more than a few shuffling steps again, that I might just die in my room. I’m so happy now, my skin looks good (the dermatologist’s protocol worked!), I haven’t had to check my blood pressure or blood sugar in months because I feel stable. I don’t know what has brought about the difference, but I’ll list everything I do here so that I can reference it in the future and maybe it’ll help someone.

  • I stopped panicking about my sleep. Of course, if I get fewer than 4 hours, I’m upset and worried, but I seem to be able to sleep pretty well from 12am to 5 or 6am, so, I’m going to trust my body and be okay with that. When I’m crippled and hazy from lack of sleep, I remember the eternity I spent in viral, malarial night sweat hell. There is not much these days that is as bad as my nights were from November 2011 to early 2013. I will never be able to adequately describe how sick I was as my body tried to rid itself of whatever evil has invaded. So, I will take constant awakenings and nightmares in a DRY bed any day.
  • I track my resting HR every morning before getting up and before taking my thyroid hormones.
  • I lie in bed for a few hours in the morning, cuddling with my dogs and reading, with the shades open to let light in and set my body clock.
  • I wear my pedometer every day and have been taking 1300-1500 steps a day for the last two months versus 300-600 in December.
  • I usually have my light box on for about 45 minutes while I’m on the computer with my morning tea.
  • I only drink teas that I have researched and I trust the companies (their growing procedures, their tea bag materials– here’s some good help) and, besides my morning decaf black tea, I only drink teas that can supposedly help with one of my symptoms (tulsi, roasted dandelion root, ginger, chamomile, peppermint, licorice, fennel).
  • I drink a vegetable juice every few days in the morning, on an empty stomach (following these tips).
  • I do preemptive rests, as well as recovery rests. I lie down a minimum of 3 hours a day (on top of the 12+ hours I’m in bed at night). Ideally, this would be in 3 separate hour-long meditations, but it often winds up being 2 sessions. When I’m not doing very well, I can usually get out of bed for a few hours in the morning and the evening, but I might spend from 12pm to 7pm in bed, on top of 10pm to 10am. My preemptive rests consist of relaxation and meditation. They work by recharging my body and brain in what feels remarkably like what I imagine an old crappy phone gets when plugged in for an hour (my best friend described my body this way when I was still functioning and not housebound and I didn’t quite get how accurate it was until I spent a year “plugging in” to bed throughout the day). Recovery rests are different. My initial warning signs these days are neurological: my voice gets very weak and I slur badly and can’t find words. My head hurts, vision gets blurry, tinnitus cranks up, coordination is off and I get internal tremors. Everything takes immense concentration. The worst symptom, though, is what I call my “buzzy head.” It’s like internal tremors in my brain. My forehead feels numb and my brain physically feels like it is buzzing and vibrating… like every mitochondrion is rocking back and forth, sputtering and smoking, trying its best to spit out a little more energy– billions of microscopic engines, overheating, gauges in the red, pushed to the max. When this hits, it’s a really bad idea to push through and I go straight to bed and usually fall into a brief in-and-out, trance-like sleep as my brain recharges.
  • I do breathing exercises every day. While resting and during meditation, I do deep breathing techniques that I learned from a video to help with MS pain. They help strengthen my diaphragm and increase oxygen and carbon dioxide. Then, throughout my rests (and any time I think about it throughout the day), I practice abdominal breathing to help settle my nervous system and calm the fight or flight response, which we live with permanently when we have central sensitization issues. Jackie over at lethargicsmiles has a great description of this type of breathing here. I’ve also read that some people benefit from purposely slowing down their breathing to help blood gas absorption.
  • I change up my meditations depending on how bad my symptoms are. Sometimes I need complete silence and I lie very still with ear plugs in. Sometimes I just need white noise and I listen to Kelly Howell’s CDs that use binaural beats to stimulate alpha, delta and theta brain waves. All other times, I alternate through yoga nidra, Buddhist meditations, guided imagery, affirmations, body scans and simple breath meditations. Find some more links at the bottom of this post.
  • I loosened my routine and relaxed my demanding brain: if I need to spend all day in bed, that’s okay. I go outside when I can, I eat junk food when I want, I don’t beat myself up if I can’t bathe for a week or don’t go to bed until midnight.
  • I made peace with my cpap. I try to wear it every night, but, if I take it off after a few hours, it’s okay. And, if I don’t wear it at all, it’s okay. I know I feel worse when I don’t wear it — I keep that in mind and try to be organised about washing it early in the day because, before bed, I often don’t have the energy — but, when I don’t wear it, I don’t panic about the hundred million apnea events that woke up my brain while I “slept”. It’s okay. I’ll be okay.
  • I try to get to physical therapy every month or so, massage every two months (I would like these to be much more often, but can’t justify the money) and I was going to start regular hydrotherapy, but, unfortunately, after the first session, I realised it’s not worth the expense ($83), so I will try to mimic it at home (basically, hot and cold towels and electrostimulation).
  • Food: I’m sticking to my low-histamine + autoimmune protocol diet for the most part (that is: NO gluten, grains except rice, dairy except butter, legumes, nightshades, nuts, seeds, eggs, and no high-histamine foods, such as pork, tomatoes, eggplants, spinach, bananas, vinegar, fermented foods, processed meats, tinned fish/meat etc.). I was strictly low-sulfur for a month and that might have contributed to my feeling better, but I have since stopped that. I don’t beat myself up for my Kerrygold addiction and I don’t worry about my constant snacking and the fact that I go through sweet potato chips and plantain crackers by the bag-load and can’t seem to quit Salted Caramel Chocolate coconut ice cream. Life is too short. We buy organic and I eat a huge variety of veg and herbs. We always have fresh parsley, basil, rosemary, thyme, cilantro, ginger… We buy meat from farms we’ve researched and distributors we trust and make a lot of bone broth, which I drink everyday with a gram of salt in each mug. I recently switched from non-stick pans to stainless steel and cast iron. I drink filtered water. And I keep a detailed food and symptom journal (which, really, has told me nothing). That’s more than I ever did in the first 39 years of my life, so I’ve come a long way.
  • I’ve switched some products: I use Tom’s deodorant and toothpaste. I use supposedly less toxic shampoos, soaps and sunscreens. I use a face wash, moituriser, dish and clothes detergent that don’t make me gag with perfume and are kind to sensitive skin.
  • I use dry eye drops throughout the day and the Rxs from my dermatologist on my face. At night, I put castor oil over my liver and Badger sleep balm on my throat. When my neck is acting up, I use my TENS unit, cervical traction and Tiger Balm neck and shoulder rub. And then there’s vitamins and supplements…
  • Here’s what I take currently:
    • Morning:
      • thyroid hormones (T3 and T4)
      • Probiotic
      • 2.5mg Prednisone
    • Before meals:
      • Thorne Bio-Gest (for gastroparesis)
      • Digestive Enzymes (for gastroparesis)
      • 250mg yucca (for high ammonia/CBS mutation)
    • After breakfast/mid-day meal:
      • 500mg Acetyl L carnitine
      • 100mg CoQ10
      • 36.5mg riboflavin 5’ phosphate
      • 15mg zinc + B6
      • 500-1,000mg vitamin C
      • 100mcg molybdenum (for high ammonia/CBS mutation)
      • Thorne trace Minerals
    • Sporadically:
      • 1 tsp Calm magnesium + calcium
    • After dinner:
      • 2,000mg fish oil (1,000mg EPA, 50mg DHA)
      • 4,000iu Vitamin D3
    • Before bed:
      • 400-600mg magnesium glycinate chelate
      • GABA+theonine
      • 1mg Melatonin
  • I am soon going to add charcoal, Thorne Medibulk, biotin, and a second probiotic with histamine-lowering strains of bacteria.

Something is making a difference. Or maybe it’s just time. Who knows? But I will continue to persevere.

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Lilac Wine

It’s ten in the morning and I’m sitting cross-legged and barefoot at our garden table in the warm sun, wearing a skimpy summer dress. My husband has created an oasis in the middle of the city. There is a fountain gurgling methodically and bird song all around me. I can hear children playing in the school yard a few blocks away and, every hour, the church bells chime the time. I close my eyes and I could be in Italy or France. I hear no airplanes or traffic. I’m sitting under a tall birch tree in April and, although I’m allergic, I’m having no problems. Lilac bows its scent over my head and, although synthetic perfumes now make me wince, I find the lilac’s aroma intoxicating.

If I were healthy again, I would do it all different. I would take the time to notice every bud and leaf, I would revel in meditation and have friends over all the time. I would visit farmers’ markets and experiment with recipes, host dinner parties and enjoy scrumptious desserts. I would take long walks with my dogs and listen to more music. I would never, ever take one minute of health for granted.

Today, I can’t stop smiling. I am outside, my body doesn’t hurt and I’m feeling pretty good. I’m getting stronger, I’m not lonely and the fears of the future have been sizzled away by the sun. We will undoubtedly have to leave this home eventually and, perhaps that will even be a good thing for my health, but, until that day, I will be grateful for the beauty wrapped around me, my family’s health, and for how fortunate I am.

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