Luna Tail

Okay so it’s been about three weeks… well, three and a half weeks. I go back to the doctor next Tuesday for a checkup to see how I’ve been doing.

Well, I think I’m dong pretty good. I’m doing well enough to have cleaned the house today. I cleaned the bathroom, the spare bedroom, and the front room. Mopped and dusted too. And I scrubbed the bathroom with a toothbrush so it’s cleaner than it has been in along time.

Dang how does dirt get everywhere? Nooks and crannies and even on the walls and ceiling! Ugh! Well, for now the house is getting clean. I just don’t like cleaning on a regular basis. Ugh. I’d rather have someone else do it, maybe the Wilmington NC real estate company will clean for me!

So anyway back to the Candida… At the beginning of last week I felt rotten again, and I don’t know if it was doing Obedience with my dogs Saturday and Sunday, or if I ate too much of the cheese and coconut milk ice cream I had bought. Maybe that ice cream had too much sugar or something. Either way, by Thursday I felt better. And today I feel better too.

I do seem to need a nap in the middle of the day for an hour or two. It makes me feel much better. Unfortunately I can’t really do that at work. So I’m dragging by the end of the work days. But I think, all in all, I’m on my way back to health. Yay!

Well here’s another picture of the peas. I just really liked this picture too so had to post it up! LOL. Now onto my Candida…

So this morning I woke up and I think I might feel better. I feel cooler like my body temperature has dropped. And I feel less general pain, and I feel like I have more patience and am not so much in a rush. I feel like I don’t have to bury myself in the computer or something else to avoid the pain.  So these are all good things even though they are not really technical definitions of symptoms.

I did spend a lot of time sleeping today, though. The bed was so comfortable, and soft, and the dogs were snuggling with me, and I just felt pretty good. I mean not 100% healthy, but just better and more peaceful. Though still very tired. So I figured I’d let myself just sleep if that’s what my body wanted. So I got up about 7:30, and about 9 I went back to bed and stayed there until just now, and it’s about 1pm now.

I’ve been eating very healthy, sticking with the Candida diet, and taking the Diflucan which is the prescription to fight the fungal infection. So I’m just really hoping that Candida is my problem and this treatment is going to help me get better. So far, so good.

And maybe I’ll stop buying stuff… spending money is one of the things I do to help myself feel better, even though it really doesn’t help! So I have tried not to spend, and have avoided getting shipping boxes on my doorstep lately, so that’s good!

So we have peas in the backyard! Only a couple have been ripe though, so far. They need a few more days to ripen so we can start eating them. The ones I ate today were amazingly good. I love backyard veggies they are so much better than store bought veggies.

I got this fun picture of them too, I love taking closeup pictures.

And now for an update of my Candida diet. Well, I’m so way more addicted to sugar than I had realized. Every afternoon I have the most intense sugar cravings! I’m supposed to not eat sugar or even fruit. And I’ve been sticking with it… except I cheated once yesterday and had a caramel, pecan, almond paste thing that my husband didn’t like.. which probably put me back a couple of days from getting over these darn sugar cravings.

But I’m sticking with it, and taking my meds, and hoping the yeasties all go away so that I can feel better. And even without using top rated diet pills, I’ve lost a couple of pounds on this Candida diet, so that’s a good thing too!

So I went to the new doctor today. I really liked him a lot! Instead of wanting to treat my knee pain with exercise, my stuffed nose with allergy meds, my sore ankles with ice, my neck with physical therapy, and my mono with rest… he took in the whole picture and came up with something I didn’t really consider… candida.

If you are not sure, Candida is a like a chronic yeast infection. So he thinks I might have that and maybe a fungal infection too. So I’m taking probiotics so my body gets the good bacteria reestablished, and I’m also on anti-fungal meds for a month.

If this doesn’t help, I could still have Lyme, or maybe something else. But it’s a good place to start. I have to cut out the sugars in my diet… simple sugars are bad. Of course I’m going to be craving chocolate and sweets like mad for a while… bleh. Oh well, I can do it. I want to feel better!

My mind has been really foggy lately and I haven’t been doing good at my job, or at life, really. Maybe a jobs in sales would be better… oooh no, I think it would be worse! I wish I could take a month off but I do have to get through the work week… I’ll make it.

So today is my first day working again. I’m working from home (taking a break lol) and getting some things done. I just hate working after being sick. I feel worthless, like an idiot, and terribly guilty about being sick.

Plus, this sick just does not want to go away and I’m really afraid it’s going to come back again, with a vengeance, like it has in the past. Doctor appt is June 15th. Maybe they can see me sooner, though. I’m on their cancellation list so we’ll see.

Anyway, along with the guilt, I feel like I’m not good enough, not smart enough, takes me too long to find answers to problems, and I just want to run under a rock and hide.

I guess the answer to this is to just do my best and work all week as hard as I can. Though stress and shame usually activate my avoidance patterns instead of my work hard patterns.

Oh on a good note, just got a call from the doc! They can get me in on the 10th now, instead of the 15th. Yay! It’s not much, but it’s closer to the present!

Well last night I had a hard time falling asleep again, though yesterday, for the most part, I was feeling better. I didn’t do much, worked on my Facebook Farm Town, looked at boy names again, and did some other stuff on the computer. When I spend all day on the computer the day goes by fast, and usually I don’t feel much. When I do things not on the computer, I sense my body more. So when I feel rotten I usually just bury myself in the computer or TV so I don’t have to feel.

I took some Advil PM last night and that seemed to put me to sleep. Realizing that I should keep a regular sleep and wake schedule if I can, I got up about 9am this morning (LOL well hey, it’s better than 11am or 2pm!). Put some winter clothes away, I’m feeding Lucy, and then Lucy and Angel will be getting baths. It’s good to be on my feet, take a shower, and feel like a live human being again instead of a jump of pain filled muscles. I really want to start being active a bit, exercise, feel and look better, get some HGH releasers maybe if that’d help. If I have Fibromyalgia, and I probably should act as if I do, I can follow the advice on the web that I’ve been finding to maybe help me stabilize a bit.

So time goes by, I have to take it easy. I’m home today again but tomorrow I’m going to brave the last day of the agility seminar and hope it doesn’t take me out again. Ugh.

I had an awful night last night. In fact, I had an awful day yesterday.  Yesterday was my birthday, so it was supposed to be a good day! Well I had fun and I love my life but I felt miserable.

I did obedience with Chase and Levi on Saturday and Sunday. But I felt okay. I mean, I didn’t feel like jumping or running around with lots of energy, but I didn’t feel miserable either. Monday was Memorial Day, the holiday, and I stayed home all day. I had some puppy excitment that day I can’t talk about so I was a bit manic, but other than that I seemed to feel okay.

Monday night I went to bed about 9 like normal and I had five dogs in bed with me.  Which made it hard to sleep but usually I’m okay anyway. But I woke up Tuesday morning and felt like I’d been hit by a truck. I was so completely tired and all of my muscles just hurt, in every part of my body.

I went home a couple hours early from work on Tuesday and came home and went to bed for an hour and a half. That seemed to help. So I got up and cleaned up my spare bedroom a bit, then sat and watched Land of the Lost from the 70s for a couple hours, then went to bed.

However, I could not sleep at all.  My muscles all were in excruciating pain.  They felt like they were on fire.  Not like a flaming orange fire, but like a smoldering red coal fire that is left of a camp fire after all the flames are gone. I don’t know how else to describe it. But I could not sleep so I listened to my Charles deLint audiobook off and on all night. I finally decided, at 2am, that there was no way I’d be able to function at work on Wednesday so I called my boss and left a message saying I wasn’t going to make it into work on Wednesday.

I ended up falling asleep about 3am after I took a hydrocodone for the muscle pain. I think it did help the pain go away a little bit.  I should have thought of taking one earlier. Bleh. My mind wasn’t working either.

So I slept until about 11am today. Got up, am working a bit from home, and taking it easy.  This has happened before.  I think it’s taken me a long time to find words to describe the pain I go through. I don’t think I really did anything to cause it.  Nothing that was very high activity or stress or anything. Ugh. I hate this. I think there is more than Mono going on. Maybe Lyme, maybe Fibromyalgia. I don’t know. I have an appt with a doctor on June  15th, Monday, to find out. He’s an MD and he knows about Lyme and he also uses holistics in his practice. And, he’s on my  insurance, yay!

I will try to take it easy until then. I am weak today, I feel so tired and my body is so very weak. And I can still feel a bit of the muscle pain too.  Maybe I should try another pain killer. Or maybe a Colonix would help… ugh I just don’t know!

Yay! I’m excited! He’s an MD and he is Lyme Literate, too. Though I don’t know if I should post names or not. Anyway, I have an appointment for June 15th, it’s a Monday, so I can work from home and head down for the appt. It’s in Provo, Utah, so about an hour away from me. But if he can help me, then it’ll be worth it.

I also found a website where I can track my symptoms and how I’m feeling. MedHelp.org.  So after a month I can really see what I’m feeling, and what trends I have.  And doctors may just hate it that us patients now have access to the web and a ton of info… but from what I’ve read I could have some sort of auto-immune condition. Maybe Lupus or something. But Fibromyalgia is also considered auto-immune. But talking to this guy about Lyme will make me feel better too.  Mono can be a side-condition of these other conditions.

I’ve been feeling pretty crappy today. I have felt crappy since last Wednesday.   I tried to do agility with Chase on Saturday, but failed. I wasn’t able to keep up with him. So I stayed home on Sunday and slept a good portion of the day. Bleh. Still today I feel tired, my neck hurts, my knees hurt, my head hurts… yadda yadda yadda. I’m sure the world is tired of hearing of my complaints.

My laptop also may be sick, maybe it needs more  computer memory but it’s been making a nasty sound like the fan is going into overdrive. Maybe it needs to go back to the shop, too, but I hope not.

Oh well, I have a month to wait for this doc. So I’ll take care of myself until then, and take life slow.

So I’ve been steadily getting worse since last Wednesday. I know I have Mono… and I have a fever that comes and goes, I’m achy, my neck has hurt for a year and a half, and I am tired and generally feel awful.

But the last few days I’ve been feeling a neck pain that feels more like an infection than a pain that’s related to the muscles or bones of my neck. It’s hurting my neck still, for sure, and now it’s radiating out of my neck and into my jaw, the back of my head, and down my back. It’d kinda freaking me out.

I’m going to go to the doctor on Monday again and see if they can tell what’s going on. I really dislike doctors for pains like this because they seem to think that every pain is individual, where I think they are all related. Including my knee pain, my headaches, and my stuffy nose.

Maybe I have meningitis… and I’m going to insist on another Lyme test from a company I received a bit ago. It was recommended by a yahoo Lyme group as the regular western blot can be a false negative about 50% of the time.

Anyway, for now rest and lots of tea.

Well I am back from flyball. Haven’t gotten back to posting as much as I’d like… but I’m getting there. I still feel crappy. And today we just found out that one of our team members has been laid off. Complete shock as we thought she would be the last to go. Actually, I’d rather have it be me that got laid off. She is so much more valuable than I am to this team… but I don’t want to blog about it too much. You know, privacy and all that.

So I’ll just talk about my health and my energy level. I don’t have, or want, a Bob stroller to jog with but I wish I could jog again. I wonder if my continued feelings of blek are because of Fibromyalgia or Lyme Disease. I got a Lyme kit test in the mail but it’s expensive to send off. $225.00 for the cheapest one. And I don’t have $225.00 right now, much less more than that. And I don’t know where to have blood drawn and prepared. So I’m looking at Lyme support in Utah and I’ve found a Yahoo Group that I like. However, they do some things by phone, and I hate the phone.

I don’t think my Mono is all gone yet either. And my neck hurts. Yesterday it got so bad in the evening my head hurt too. I had to run an errant last night but then when I got home I took some pills and crashed on the couch and that helped.

I’m emotionally fried today because of my friend getting laid off. Geez… what a stupid decision. That’s all I’ll say.