Chemotherapy
I’ve been meaning to write up a long web page about where I’ve been, but I’m stuck in a catch-22: I’ve been so sick it’s been hard to put down focused thoughts in print or to find the energy to do so even when I can focus.
I haven’t written much email in the past month, I go weeks without opening the computer, and so forth. The Twitter feed did keep me from going totally nuts: www.twitter.com/girlmark - I can handle posting 140-character microblogs from my phone.
I’ve been sick since mid-May, I think, and by mid-September it got so bad that I was starting to contemplate an emergency room visit- I was spending most days gasping for air like I had asthma (which I don’t). I’d been on antibiotics since May and if this was just Lyme, I should have seen results by then instead of getting so much worse.
Enough other oddball stuff surfaced to point pretty clearly to a babesia infection. Along with Lyme, it’s on the much-publicized ‘Deadly Dozen’ list- lucky me- and treating it SUCKS. It’s the most common co-infection found along with Lyme in infected animals, and does a serious number on people with both diseases. I guess with the new Deadly Dozen report, I get to feel like a pioneer for contracting it ahead of the rest of y’all.
I don’t know if I’d gotten it as a new infection in May, when I definitely picked up enough of something to cause heavy immune activity- or if I’d had a ’stealth’ asymptomatic babesia infection all along, which would explain why I haven’t fully kicked Lyme yet- but luckily for me, it finally came out of hiding enough for my doctor and I to consider it this summer.
Like all the tick-borne illnesses, the testing for babesia sucks- it’s a malaria-like organism but it only attacks 1% of red blood cells so it’s difficult to find on standard malaria blood smears. DNA-based or antibody testing only looks for one or two species out of suspected multiple strains. I’d never had the “malaria-like” symptoms before, but since May I developed enough of the other weird shit- extreme anorexia, neurological respiratory distress unrelated to any physiological cause, night sweats, nausea unrelated to my antibiotics, and a few others- that we put two and two together. Getting drugs for it was a whole nother ordeal- atavoquone alone costs $1400/month- but I’ve managed so far.
What I didn’t know was that treatment worsens the symptoms so much. So, for the past 6 weeks or so, I’ve felt like a completely dysfunctional, though angry, frustrated, and pain-ridden, blob. Supposedly this shit continues for several months, though I’m starting to see the light a little and some things have gotten better. Ughhh.
More to come…
oh, and, I’m well enough to be in Oklahoma City teaching Biodiesel Essentials next weekend: www.girlmark.com/tour