It feels like it’s been a long time since I have written, so I figured I would whip up a little update for you.

My port has finally healed, and only hurts when I am getting a line inserted, as the nurse has to dig her fingers into my skin to hold the port in place as she tries to hit the imaginary bullseye. I expect it will stay tender there for awhile, but otherwise, the poking part and the removal don’t bother me (the latter doesn’t hurt at all!) And it is SO nice not to have a sore arm, the extra dressing, or the pain of a PICC line!

A few additions to the protocol have been made. I began thyroid meds, as my last blood results showed it to be out-of-whack. The hope is, once these kick in, I will face less anxiety/depression, and regain more energy.

I am also to start on oxygen as soon as Matt is home long enough to shop around for a tank (apparently they don’t prescribe these things...) This is to help not only with the chest pains I have been having as of late, but also with the extremely vivid dreams that I have been having (almost all of them nightmares); dreams so vivid I carry them all throughout the next day, sometimes not knowing what is real or dreamt. They, along with my seizures and poor memory are the result of a lack of oxygen to my brain (leeched by the Lyme disease), and the introduction of an oxygen tank may help with all of the above, with the potential added benefits of pain reduction and increased energy as well. For now, this is only something I will have to do at night, so I am hoping I won’t even notice it in my sleep.

I also started a couple of other meds, but, as is the norm around here, Matt would have to be my memory for me and tell you what they are and why. My memory has yet to improve, but small changes are giving me hope: my hormones are balancing out, I haven’t had a seizure in over a month, my twitchiness has gone down, and BEST of all, I have been able to pick Jack up once in awhile!

I was doing better for awhile a couple of weeks ago, but with the introduction of new meds I have been feeling pretty rough lately (That’s the way it goes—they let you regain your strength and then they up the meds!) I have been sleeping long hours again; sometimes not even waking up to eat; or, if I do, eating laying down (it’s an art, and a science, really. More of a science...it would need to be more graceful to become an art).

With the Herxheimer has come another bout of depression, which is unwelcome but not foreign. I have been very fortunate to have the support groups that I do to encourage me along and give me strength. And while they come fewer and further between, they seem to run in the same themes: How much longer is this going to take (I can’t take it anymore), feeling homesick, and the guilt, disappointment, etc, over not being the mom I want to be for Jack.

Each time, God provides me with the choice not to live this in vain; each time, an opportunity to learn from His Great Wisdom.  The lesson this time: I am right where I am supposed to be. I can be proud, and think that I could better serve, or be better suited elsewhere; but this is part of His infinite, perfect plan for me; and I am right where I am most valuable to Him. I need to forget my ideas about what is deemed “useful,” or “best” or “my job,” and just be; because in the end, our ultimate purpose is to love, and I can love right here from my bed. Not necessarily in the ways that I want to, but perhaps in better ways. In God’s ways, if He will help me to.

There are so many other things I could say right now, but for tonight, I will leave it at that.

I pray for all of you, and I am so grateful for each prayer that is said for me. I know He hears them.

Keep well,

Kate

^“ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who

 loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” ~1 John 4:7-12

“What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died, more than that, who was raised to life is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughter.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” ~ Romans 8:31-39