Keep on Rolling

Oh friends, I have missed you.

It has been far too long, and there is so much to say!

Many blog posts to come, but for now, I’ll start where I left off.

Remem­ber that last blog post, with the theme of “Try Again?”

Super. Keep that in mind, it will come in handy.

Also, do you remem­ber those plas­tic balls for ham­sters and ger­bils and oth­er such rodent-sized class pets?

Ya know, the ones that had a hole to insert the ham­ster, that when closed allowed your fur­ry friend to cruise around the first floor?

[Also the one in which Fluffer the Haas Ham­ster took a casu­al field trip down the base­ment stairs, cir­ca 1992. Fear not, he lived to tell the tale.] 

The best part about the ball of won­der was the end­less amuse­ment in watch­ing the poor ham­ster roll around, see some­thing he want­ed, and SMACK! real­ize he couldn’t quite get there in a pink plas­tic sphere the size of a basketball.

And, bless his sweet lit­tle ham­ster heart, he would try over and over and over again.

Peo­ple.

I fear I have become a hamster.

I stopped treat­ment in June.

Yes, I real­ize it is August. Roll with it

[Get it….ROLL with it…]

Any­way.

It real­ly wasn’t much of a con­ver­sa­tion, more of looks passed back and forth across the table as my doc­tor and I both knew — it had been too long, it was­n’t working.

I was 6.5 months into a 9 month pro­gram, and instead of improve­ment or at least equi­lib­ri­um, I have new symp­toms and exac­er­bat­ed “old faith­fuls.” Espe­cial­ly ques­tion­able giv­en that you are sup­posed to feel 100% healed for the last 3 months. Oops.

So, we both knew. We knew the treat­ment wasn’t work­ing, and we knew in that glance across the table that we are deal­ing with more than “just” tick borne illness.

We are still miss­ing a big piece of the puzzle.

I think I’ve known for a while, back in the deep, dark recess­es of my heart, but I wasn’t quite ready to bring it to the light. Odd as this may sound, the tick borne ill­ness offered me some­thing that I had pre­vi­ous­ly shut out as a pos­si­bil­i­ty — treat­ment. Recovery.

Cure?

All of a sud­den I went from a yogi in tree pose on a moun­tain, to a pony gal­lop­ing in cir­cles around the ring.

 

Some­times when I look back on my blog, I feel like a bit of a joke.

I’m off to Mayo! I’m going to find a cure!…Wow, this is prov­ing to be a bit hard­er than I thought…So it turns out I just need to relearn how to eat…False alarm — I don’t need to relearn how to eat…Ok, this is my life, let’s do this…Hold up — let’s remove a few organs, and THEN I will be well!…Hmm, not work­ing out so well. Down a few organs, still no change…Ok, time for accep­tance. I’m mov­ing on! Life is grand!…But wait! You have a tick borne ill­ness! We can treat this!…Aaaaand treat­ment is try­ing to kill me….Oh, and odd that I have all of these new symp­toms too, must be from my treatment…Or maybe not from my treat­ment, or even from a tick borne ill­ness at all??

Open pink ball, insert ham­ster, sprint in one direc­tion, run into wall.

Repeat.

If I’m not in a giant ham­ster ball, then I am most cer­tain­ly on The Tru­man Show.

I MUST be a char­ac­ter in a movie who doesn’t real­ize that the entire world is watch­ing her and wait­ing for her to put the pieces together.

Ya know, like a reaaaaaaal­ly drawn out sci-fi med­ical mys­tery thriller.

With one main character.

About 23,090 sup­port­ing characters.

And scores of cookies.

Right??

Alas.

 

 

So I’m back to try­ing again. I’m back to mul­ti­ple med­ical “dates” per week. I’m back to gen­tly sug­gest­ing the med­ical assis­tant take a seat before tak­ing my med­ical his­to­ry, as I slow­ly slide over my 4 inch binder of med­ical records and watch the eyes bulge out of his/her head. I’m back to the land of the bizarre.

On the plus side, I am now the top­ic of din­ner table con­ver­sa­tion, see­ing as my neu­rol­o­gist and hema­tol­o­gist are mar­ried. I think I might start pro­vid­ing them with meals. If they are going to talk about me, I might as well be sure they are prop­er­ly fueled, yes? I am a Cer­ti­fied Health Coach, after all. Greens for everyone!

Any­way.

I want to tell you that I jumped into this most recent search with much pep and gus­to, but that would be a lie.

The truth is that I jumped into it much like my poor ham­ster fell down the flight of stairs — some­what acci­den­tal­ly and with much exasperation.

I’ve done this whole search thing. Many times. Yet it seems that every time I set my soul to live and let live and say has­ta la vista to the med­ical world, a new organ breaks and I’m back on the med­ical goose chase.

 Frankly, it can be a wee bit exhausting.

But the thing is, I guess it’s kind of like an epic road trip, or a Bear Gryll’s adven­ture series. You do hard things and go as far as you can, and then you take a lit­tle break to reboot and refu­el. Soon­er or lat­er, a new chal­lenge sur­faces and you are back at it — forg­ing ahead and avoid­ing obstacles.

And although I may often won­der just where I am head­ed, this road trip is cer­tain­ly not lack­ing in excite­ment. I have to believe that I’m on this path for a reason.

I just have to.

And while it has cer­tain­ly tak­en an adjust­ment here or there, I know it is a true gift it is to be able to car­ry on, full speed ahead, and con­tin­ue on this grand adven­ture of life.

On the oth­er hand, blaz­ing my adven­tur­ous path while safe­ly enclosed in a giant pink bub­ble might not be such a bad idea…