Life is made up of stories within the story.

It is my intention to write my first blog as a time-line story that will include smaller story blogs to be added at later times. The smaller story blogs will be added in the order they appear in this first article. Each story is about ‘miracles’. (Someone recently was ‘not liking’ that word, so I changed it to synchronicities. This made them feel it was more current.)

As is often the case in a healing journey story, ‘little miracles’ happen, and memories are created. When I was a young girl, I felt a special affinity with memories and created my artistic nomer of Memore’laine. And so, my blogging name is Memore’laine.

A vector borne illness and the insult it caused to my mind, body and spirit happened in the year of 2012. I was bitten by a tick while working in a greenhouse in late May, early June. The greenhouse had just opened to customers so we were working a lot of overtime. One day I came home unusually very tired and sleepy. I laid down to rest fully clothed, collapsing on the couch. I awoke with a start the following morning with just enough time to do a hand-wash at the sink, change of clothes, and head back to work. That night when I returned home, I finally drew a bath. While washing I ran my hands over my body and felt something. In the next few moments as this was registering, I saw a blood-filled tick walking up the side of the bathtub. I was quite shocked and not knowing what to do I flushed it down the toilet. The next day the spot where I had felt something became very hot. In a few days a cyst formed.

I made a doctor appointment and asked to come in immediately. I told my doctor that I had knocked a tick off, it was blood-filled, and could I get a Lyme test? She looked at the spot and determined it to be an ingrown hair. I felt confused, and told her again about the tick… she refused to test me for Lyme (I know now it would have been too soon for a Lyme test to be conclusive) and the times being what they were I did not press for antibiotics like I should have done. That summer the cyst did not heal and in a matter of a few short weeks I was experiencing flu like symptoms. I remembered wondering if this was connected to the tick bite, but I let it go as the flu like symptoms finally dissipated with the fall season.

Fall led into winter and the New Year of 2013. Little did I know then – but do now – after coming home from a vacation in Jamaica that January, symptoms of Lyme Borrelia and Bartonella coinfection would present themselves: a very serious case of vertigo hitting me hard and fast in February. While turning over in bed, my brain felt like it would flip inside my head. I could not roll over or get up without carefully turning my body, then putting my hands on the bed to lift myself. I could not walk without placing my hands onto objects or walls. Days turned into weeks of dealing with vertigo. I became worried that I would be unable to return to work at the greenhouse in March. Thankfully it disappeared as quickly as it came on. The fear of experiencing this again to this day means I turn my body carefully, and I never get up out of bed without great care.

I started experiencing other strange symptoms: perspiration dropping in rivulets from my armpits, swollen breasts and sore nipples so raw that the brush of a bed sheet was torturous in the extreme. Symptoms came and went as fast as they would appear. I started to lose weight. I was left with a feeling that something was not right.

I connected with a friend who would come to mean a lot to me in my healing journey. When I first went to see Kelly, she told me that she herself had experienced an extreme weight loss and was waking with migraines that would last all day. She had been to see her doctor and had a lot of tests run with nothing conclusive found to be wrong. Our talks were long and filled with shared stories about our lives and creative mutual interests of writing. Kelly and I seemed to have a fast bond friendship that touched on our mutual depth of faith in God and a higher power. We talked about ‘feathers’ and their spiritual significance as I had just found an Eagles feather…

Kelly had a gift. What she told me that spring means more than I can ever say. It is such a huge part of the silver and gold threads woven in and throughout my healing journey story. Kelly told me I would become very ill, but that I would survive it, and through this experience my life would be forever changed. I would find a purpose.

‘Kelly seemed driven to share with me many things as though there was something that needed to be said… she read to me a poem entitled ‘Bridesmaids’ which she had written for a friend. She shared with me her excitement about her own upcoming wedding.’ These words in italics are a small part of the blog story entitled ‘Feathers, Let There Be Signs’.

That spring while working in the greenhouse, I started limping and had a very sharp pain in my foot at the top of my shoe. It eventually got so bad that I went into emerge as a hot red spot had come up on the front of my leg. I believe now that it was another tick bite and I have since learned from other Lymies that once bitten you are more prone to other tick bites.

I had returned to doing yoga and started a class that July. After a few weeks of attending, while doing a heart opening chakra floor segment, I had an episode of feeling my heart flip over inside my chest. It was so painful I immediately clutched my chest and tried to calmly breathe through the pain. It felt like my heart had just flipped in the same manner as my brain had done back in February. I answered my yoga instructor’s questions of concern since he had seen what had happened as he led the exercise. I quit attending the class out of fear that it would happen again.

The migraines and neck pain would come and go. By early August I had dropped even more weight. I had extreme sensitivities to food and alcohol. I thought of Kelly often and in my concern over the heart flip, I dropped in to see her. I met her fiancé, who told me Kelly had spoken of me and he would be sure to tell her when she came home from work that I had dropped by. I found another Eagles feather on Saturday and on Sunday Kelly went into the hospital. Kelly passed away the following week. It was the most beautiful funeral service I have ever attended. With a reading of her poem ‘Bridesmaids’, the memorial words focusing on ‘Feathers’ and how often they are mentioned in the bible. Coming home from the funeral a clutch of birds flew up from the ditch as I approached my home. I knew from that moment on I would never see a feather ever again without thinking of her.

That fall symptoms came and went. I would get worse and then better with swollen glands and teeth pain. One side of my body seemed worse than the other and my eyesight was failing fast with floaters blurring my vision. The New Year of 2014 came, and vertigo symptoms would come and go. I was sweating so profusely that I would sit and feel water pouring down the sides of my body. Insomnia and a strange sensation of crawling under my skin had developed across my upper back. I developed dyslexia and an inability to read and retain information. It became impossible to read and write well. I was dropping things and constantly tripping. Bruises would appear from the slightest of bumps.

I started work at the greenhouse again that spring. I seemed to catch every virus and flu now going around. This just added to my health issues as my weight continued to plummet. Back to the doctor I went to try and see what was happening by having bloodwork and testing done to determine what was causing this. All tests were coming back that nothing was wrong. By June an extra stress was finding out my father was ill. He was diagnosed with Idiopathic Fibrous Tissue in his lungs.

I took what was happening with my father so hard, coupled with my own worsening symptoms. I went into that summer not making the connection to the tick bite from the two previous springs before as I worried about my father’s health. Back and forth to the doctor I went for more bloodwork to try and determine why I was experiencing very itchy armpits and passing blood from a fissure that would not seem to heal. I attended a family reunion stateside in July, seeing my family and keeping all this from them. I did not want to burden them with what was happening to me when we had a very serious situation with my father’s health.

Little did I know then that my health would deteriorate to such an extent over the next few weeks that I would not see my parents again until the following December. In August I started puking every morning and dry heave gagging constantly. My armpits were driving me insane with itching. An appointment was made with a skin specialist as a cortisone cream the doctor had prescribed was making no difference. The appointment would not be until November and I was starting to feel desperate. I attended a Pow Wow to see if I could purchase some hops tea and a cream made from a natural plant to perhaps bring me some relief to calm my armpit situation. As we walked toward the ceremonial fire, I met the brother of a friend. He talked to me about praying with intention and how to do so. I followed his instruction and finally faced the East.

‘I knew my guardian angel Kelly was directing me, but where and how? Was this what she meant in telling me I would become very ill? My deep and abiding faith in God, my plea prayer had been sent… what next?’ These words in italics are a part of the above future blog post.

Being a ‘doing’ person and having done due diligence with doctor appointments and testing, I decided to go back to my naturopath. The one whom I had seen for a couple of appointments when I had the extreme vertigo issues back in the New Year of 2013. The appointment was the worst. After looking at my urine we talked. What she told me was highly inappropriate and left me feeling shamed. She said… “I don’t know what you have done to yourself, but you are a very ill woman!” She gave me a few packets of homeopaths and directions to take them… I drove home crushed. The homeopaths she gave me were like throwing droplets of water on a raging forest fire.

In my desperation I went into a closed group on Facebook to mention my dilemma. Thankfully I got a pm from a fellow group member asking me why I was seeing a naturopath and what had she given me? I asked why? She mentioned she was a licensed naturopath. I shared what was happening and she responded with asking me to come to her home in Ohio to see her. When my husband got home that night, I asked him. He said “No, you are already seeing a naturopath here in Canada”.

I broke down and started to cry saying… “Look at me. I am a whisper of my former self. I am walking in the shadows of death. I feel like I am dying.” I had hit my eleventh hour. Every bone was sticking through the wasted frame of my body. I had gone from insomnia to now waking and falling back into bed to sleep around the clock. Two bites of food and I felt strangely full with no appetite or want of food. My body was surviving by feeding off my muscles. At this point I had lost seventy pounds from the beginning of 2013 when I had looked so healthy and full bodied on that trip to Jamaica. I had become an invalid during the course of a few weeks; with my husband doing everything from the cooking and cleaning to laundry and grocery shopping. And so, my husband relented. We went to Ohio. I wore seven layers of clothing over my wasted frame. My husband helped me into the car placing a blanket over my legs for the long six to seven hour journey.

We finally made it to Ohio, the home of my naturopath Tina… we got right to testing. It wasn’t long in and I started to cry. Tina stopped and asked me why I was crying. I told her through the tears that it was because I felt a relief and a knowing. We prayed together. I knew that God had not forsaken me. My plea prayer at the Pow Wow had been answered. After the testing was finished, we discussed the results and a homeopathic liquid tincture protocol that would first address a blocked biliary system, my extreme fatigue, and the skin issues. Tina did not tell me at this first appointment what was the root cause of my illness.

We returned the following week to start our homeopathic protocols and immediately upon taking my first dose I knew this was going to bring me back from deaths door. Tina explained that the homeopaths would last me three months and then we would meet for a follow up reassessment.

Simultaneous to me starting my homeopaths I had signed up for an online course for women which was to last for six to eight weeks. How perfect for me to work on my writing skills which had suffered. I was determined to persevere through anything while I was healing. The closed Facebook group where I had met Tina became a safe place of meeting other people who also had health issues and protocols to share for changing my diet. My energy improved and my ability to write was returning, having fewer issues with dyslexia and memory retention.

I had disappeared by staying home and rarely going out, it was time to give my friends some answers. I called my friends and invited them to my home for a girls’ night. To be sure it was a shock upon first seeing me, but we laughed – we cried, just like we always did and do.

All this time I had been on the phone with my parents asking about my father’s health and letting them know about going to Ohio, but I had not seen my family since the previous July family reunion. Now I was showing improvement and I wanted my father to see Tina as well. Other friends wanted to see Tina too. I phoned her to discuss perhaps coming to Canada for my reassessment. Things were not working out with scheduling and I was running out of my homeopaths. By the time we finally arranged to meet at a hotel in Port Huron well into early December I had returned to a debilitated state of returned symptoms. The day had arrived with times arranged for my friends to meet with Tina and my family to go second last before me taking the final time slot.

Years later in retrospect Tina told me that I had let myself be compromised by trying to make it work for others to see her. To me it meant everything for my father’s health sake. Even his heart surgeon highly recommended the liver drain homeopaths that my father had taken when he had heart surgery a couple years later.

I left the hotel room knowing my parents should be arriving for their scheduled appointments soon. I was nervous and expecting the same reaction from them as my friends had had upon seeing me. Sure enough, coming down the hallway was my parents. The look of shock was immediate…. Hugs and tears accompanied by questioning looks and words. My father’s look of love calmed me as he nodded and smiled, my mother’s immediate question of “Why? Why have you hidden this from us?” I nodded back saying “I did not want to burden you.” As we entered the hotel room for their scheduled time slots, I asked my mother to rest with me on the bed as I was tired. Not long into my light sleep I heard my mother ask my husband a question… “Why does she cry in her sleep?” My husband answered as quietly as he could that “She cries in her sleep every night.” I believe this to be true for a lot of Lymies. I have heard from others that our pillows are wet with tears upon waking.

Everyone who had come to see Tina were finished. It was finally time for my reassessment. First, we checked to see if my elimination pathways had opened and I showed great improvement. Then Tina turned over my first assessment sheet to show me what she had written on the back three months before.

EPSTEIN BARR VIRUS
LYME

I gave a gasp! I told Tina that I had been bitten by a tick a couple of years before and I still had a small hard lump at the bite location. I also told her I had had a case of Mono when I was sixteen.

We went forward with checking for both as Tina told me that the symptoms for both are very similar. Tina told me she would look for one over the other first, as she was hoping it would be that one. Her face fell and a look of sadness came over her. I touched her hand and said: “It’s okay, you can tell me”. She told me there was no reaction to EBV and so we went further… she finished after what seemed a lot of different changes of test vials and sat back. “I have good news and I have bad news” she said. “Which do you want first?” I told her to give me the bad news first and the good news second to lessen the blow. Bad news was I had shown a reaction to Lyme Borrelia burgdorferi. The good news was that I had only shown a reaction to one of the myriad number of Coinfections at this time of Bartonella. Finally, an answer to what had caused me to become so ill.

On the way home it finally hit me. I started to cry quietly, letting the tears roll down my face as I looked off into the distant horizon of the darkening night skies. I walked from the car to my bedroom and collapsed, sobbing while curling my body into a tight ball. I needed to mourn and knew that to do so would be part of the healing process of grief. Waves of self pity washed over me…

“Why me?”

I spent the next couple of days crying and feeling sorry for myself. I became deeply depressed as I knew it would take time for my homeopaths to be ordered and come to my postal box in Port Huron.

‘Christmas was fast approaching; would my homeopaths arrive in time for the Christmas holidays?’

Many of the “miracle’ or synchronicity stories I have already written either in part or whole over the years on Facebook. It was always my intention to start a blog someday and that day has arrived. It feels like years of writing and then losing the ability to write well was something that weighed heavy, but the memories were always written on my heart.

Once this blog goes up, the smaller blog shares will be added on a regular basis. The cycle of the Memore’laine timeline story will continue with another larger blog and added smaller blog shares. I hope you choose to stay and read them all. By subscribing and following you can continue the story with me; sharing memories, miracles and life beyond Lyme.

Much love Memore’laine

First in series of my journey blogs