Lyme Update and The Gardens

March is flying by and the calender says it is Spring, but the gardens are still pretty brown with frozen earth…  This is another post devoted mostly to my journey with Lyme Disease.  I’ll try to keep it out of most posts, but I feel it is important to journal about my experiences, hoping eventually it can help someone else out in the future. Two weeks ago, I got confirmation of my Lyme disease with the latest test showing positive.  Finally!! After sooo  many years of knowing something was wrong, with doctors treating me like a nut case, I have an answer!  I was able to fill my prescription for the antibiotic the doctor sent me home with 6 weeks earlier. I will be taking it for four months to attempt to get the “bugs” out of my system…  The way things worked out, it may have been for the best, even though waiting for results was extremely frustrating.  I now have been treating the Lyme for 8 weeks altogether… using diet change, herbals and supplements for the first 6 weeks, adding the antibiotic for two weeks so far.  Starting with the herbals first may have kept me from getting as sick starting on the antibiotic as is possible when the disease has gone undiagnosed for so long. The bacteria have had a chance to go wild, and if too many of them are killed off too quickly, it can make one even sicker than before treatment started. I have had some really bad days so far, but know it could have been much worse. Herbal  antimicrobials are started at very low doses and build up slowly.  Many are liquids that are started only a drop at a time and increased over time. (Amazing what just one drop of an herbal tincture can do…)

Usually my bad days are the result of treatment dosage increases. A few have been the result of having a good day and using it to catch up on housework or chores that have gone undone on the bad days…  I finally learned that I should enjoy my good days and not “waste” them on the vacuuming, dishes, or whatever… I finally have had a few days where I felt better than I have in years! Every good day is another toward the hope of being back to “normal” again… whatever that will end up looking like…

Using natural treatments along with the prescription(s) has been found to increase the chances of the lyme and co-infections being controlled faster, so that is how I will be treating things. I really would love to be done with it Now, but realize that isn’t an option for me… It took over ten yrs getting sicker and sicker, so if it takes 8 months to a couple years to knock it into remission, I can deal with that… at least now there is hope…

As things start greening up and the gardens begin to show their colors, I will be paying much more attention to how I “play in them…  The top photo shows the back yard and beginning of the shade garden at the top corner of the woods where I most likely picked up the tick(s). Especially in Spring, the woods are quite damp with wet weather springs. Add to that the leaf litter, weeds and grasses in the more open areas and edges, perfect homes for the deer ticks (not to mention the herds of deer, mice, rabbits, squirrels, birds and other critters that help infect the ticks with Lyme).  Ticks are also not limited to the woods, either they have been found often in lawns too. Probably the way I have been building my gardens, I have been giving the critters even more ideal habitats since I include trees, tall plants and grasses that add shade and also attract the various host critters.

The days of wading through the weeds and crawling around in my gardens without a thought, unprotected, are over…  I will be more careful with letting the grandkids play unprotected also. The doctor told me to get Permethrin to spray on our clothes to repel the ticks. I am not really fond of adding more chemicals to my clothes or my body, so I have been researching other options.  I found that Rose Geranium essential oil made into a spray is supposed to work well as a natural repellent.  Supposedly ticks really Hate the smell of it…. wouldn’t you know…. relatives of my least favorite plant (from spending so many years propagating and growing Geraniums commercially) might be my best ally…  Actually, it is oil from Pelargonium graveolens that is used… It smells just like a cross between the hybrid ones I worked with all those years and various scented varieties…  Funny how life can turn things around…