Sunday was hard. Pain was high, all over weakness and body aches, shortness of breath, lightheaded, neuropathy, digestive distress.

Monday was excruciating. In bed all day, in tears most of the time.

I had just finished a few days of detox, which is always hard, but this felt different. It felt like I was crashing, regressing.

I’ve done so many treatment protocols that work for a while but then stop giving me relief. I thought that was happening again. I thought I was going backwards.

And then my husband asked if I’d changed my patch.

I wear a pain patch which gets changed out every week…I took it off when I took a bath and forgot to put one a new one.

For many years, it gave me relief but I still required additional narcotics for break thru pain every single day. I’ve found that Benadryl and higher doses of melatonin work better than narcotics, so I started taking those instead about a year or so ago. (Melatonin is found to be highly effective to reduce pain in some cancer patients.)

The recent treatments I’ve been doing the last 6 months have helped me reduce even the Benadryl and melatonin to once a day. That’s big progress!!!

But the patch is still necessary. That’s clear now.

Knowing that the patch gives me relief should be a good thing. But I still can’t help but feel frustrated that I still need it so desperately.

It’s hard to admit that pain will continue to be a part of my life – at least for a while, possibly forever.

I remind myself every day of words my doctor has said many times: “You’ve been sick a long time, it will take a long time to get well.”

Tickborne diseases are complicated – especially when the diagnosis was late coming. In my case, 8 years late. I get mad when I think about how it could’ve been prevented if only local doctors understood it better, if only I had understood it better. It isn’t worth dwelling on that – but I do want to help others have better knowledge than I had back then.

The main thing I want to get across to people is that if you have bizarre symptoms for which doctors don’t have answers, consider tick disease and talk to an expert (be it a Lyme specialist or patient). Feel encouraged to contact me! I can help you weed through the chaos to find answers.