I love my husband

I've been so busy at work! Then once I get home I don't feel like blogging because I've been on the computer all day already. Today I finished my work a few mins after 4:00, so I BOLTED out of there as fast as I could.

Ryan will be at work most likely til after 5:00. He's been working really hard all this year. He's been working anywhere from 45 - 50 hours a week (which includes partial days on Saturday) since the year started (possibly even before that... I can't remember). He's definitely NOT a morning person so it's hard for him to get up early on the only day he's usually able to sleep in. Then he comes home and takes care of me. He's a really gentle person and also has a big sense of humor, too. That "light", find-humor-in-everything side of him kind of balances me out. Although, it seems like we're usually on a different "silly" schedule on most days. :) He's the best.

Anyway! I've been thinking a lot lately about my health. We attended a showing of a movie about Lyme Disease called Under Our Skin recently at our church. It got me thinking again. Generally I start a new treatment or try something new, and once it doesn't work I need a big break from it. Not seeing doctors, not doing a treatment (except for maybe a minor pain med or something), etc. But I think I've had a long enough break now. I don't think I've gone to the doc or the acupuncturist yet this year concerning my "condition". I think within the next few months I should think of something new. It's hard to "be your own advocate" if you don't have the energy to even THINK about it, let alone do it. A lot of the treatments I've read about for lyme or fibro and things like that (which I'm sure I have ONE of those, or possibly a crazy food allergy), causes you to "herx" which means to have worse symptoms than you usually do before you get better. The storm before the calm, I guess you could say. I was on a lyme message board last night and again today. I remember getting what I thought was a spider bite when I was young. It was quite a big red bite, and I remember it being warm to the touch (probably because it was infected, and it also had a lot of pus (ew - i know - sorry). Looking back, i'm wondering if it was not a spider bite, but if it was in fact the "bullseye rash" that a lot of lyme patients get after being bitten by the tick that gave them Lyme. I went on the message board to ask about the whole pus thing, because everyone talks about what the rash LOOKS like, but they never talk about any other details. I've only gotten one response so far, although this woman's bite was a while back, too, so she couldn't remember everything. She said that it was quite large, she doesn't remember it being itchy, and she never tried to drain it so she doesn't remember pus... but she does remember it being warm to the touch. They say that the bullseye rash isn't usually painful or itchy. I honestly can't remember if mine was. But I think I would remember if it was REALLY itchy. It's hard to say... that was a long time ago.

While on the message board, I was reading a lot about different "treatments" as well as ways to treat just the symptoms even if destroying the lyme doesn't work. One thing people are talking a lot about is various oxygen treatments. Some sound pretty normal, some sound really, really strange, but there are a variety of different ones. Some of them might not be available in our state, either. I'm not sure. I've barely looked into it. One of the weird ones is that they take several ounces of your blood out, then they "oxygenize" it, and then they put it back in. It's supposed to kill off the lyme spirochetes (or the lyme bug, basically). That one sounds really weird and scary. haha. But another one is just the simple hyperbaric chamber which is what Mitch (my doctor's assistant dude, as well as my landlord) has in his office. He specializes in lyme-related stuff as well as the hyperbaric chamber which I think is one of the only ones in our area. It's safe as far as I know, and they use it a lot for althletes. General people use it, and if anything, it usually increases energy by a long shot. If that's all that it did, that would still be better than nothing. Basically, they change the pressure in the chamber to somewhere below sea level, and also put a bunch of extra oxygen in there. I'm not sure how it works, but apparently it does work for a lot of people. I just need to talk to Mitch and ask about how we should approach this, if he thinks it'd be a good thing for me to try, and if it might be covered by insurance for me. I also want to ask him if he thinks doing another blood test in the future would be a good move, to see if Lyme shows up later.

So... yeah, that's what's been on my mind lately. I'm so tired today! I worked 2.5 hours longer than I usually do yesterday. Luckily today i only worked about 5 1/2 hours or so. They always have lots of flexibility with me, so I'm trying to be flexible for them, too. They always give me the option to say no though. I actually feel better than I thought I would. My energy isn't as bad as it could be. It's mostly just that my neck is killin me. After I get home and lay around or sit around and watch TV for a little while I usually feel better.

There was just a cat in our yard and I threw Penguino (our stuffed animal penguin) at the door to scare it away. I hate cats!

I have a bunch of other stuff on my mind but I'll bloggy blog later I suppose. I'm gonna figure out dinner now. bleh. Byyyeee!