Yard Sale Success

Last weekend Janine, Jeff, and I had our round two yard sale fundraiser for Lyme Disease Treatment. It was a big success and a lot of work! Between the 2 sales we must have had 15-20 people donate items. Everyone was so generous with the quality and size of their donations. Janine's backyard looked like a genuine thrift store, with a little bit of everything you could imagine. On top of it we had a bake sale. It was a lot of work, but it felt good to know that we were all helping each other to get the treatment we need. Lyme literate doctors don't take insurance and most things need to be paid for up front and out of pocket.

Thanks to the generous donations and Janine's obsessive purging :-) we raised over $700 this time around making our grand total around $1300! That's amazing for a yard sale. Thank you to Janine and Jeff who worked so very hard even as their bodies were begging them to stop, to Rachel for asking again and again how she could help, to Sean and Linda and their kids for their generosity and loving support, to friends like Ambrosia, Leanna, Josh, Jim, and many others who delivered donations of awesome things. Thank you also to Asia who diligently worked the bake sale and sold a lot of cookies. And a big thank you to my husband who is there for me no matter what. I couldn't do this without his love, support, strong arms, and awesome truck. We could not have done this with out the support from each of you.

With my part of the money from the first go round I was able to pay for a doctors apt. with my LLMD. The money from this second adventure in yard sale land will help to pay for refills of my many supplements and herbs and hopefully will last long enough to pay for some of my next Dr. visit in June. I have also been receiving donations from wonderful friends through the donate button at the top of the page and have used those to pay for lab work and medicine. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! The love and support I have received form my community has put a warmth in my heart, a smile on my face, and relieved some of the worry of paying for health care on a limited income. I'm not sure exactly how Janine and Jeff are using their part of the money but I do know that they can now afford to pay for their first visit with a LLMD!!! Horray.

I'm still tired and resting from our weekend adventure and I know Jeff and Janine are as well. It takes a while to rebound from such efforts and I appreciate your understanding and patience with me.

Thanks again from the bottom of my heart.

Doctor's Apt.

Yesterday i had another visit with my Lyme Literate Dr. She was happy to hear that I'm doing well on the Salt/Vit. C protocol as well as the liquid oxygen. She said sometimes people who are more sensitive respond better to the natural approaches then to the antibiotics. However, she also said that just because I am feeling better these days doesn't mean that I am actually getting better, but that there's a trade off and sometimes being able to live and enjoy life is better then suffering through the harsh antibiotic treatments. sShe's willing to gamble with the natural stuff a bit longer because she likes how well I feel.

My CD-57 test results went down again from 60, 69, 59, to 45. She said that sometimes you'll feel better long before your immune system recovers which is what this test is checking for. She said that for now we're going to basically ignore the results and go with how I feel unless we get another really low one when I return in 2 months. So wish me luck with this salt thing. I really hope it is working because while it's nice having more energy these days I'd really like to be done with all of this and be able to work, play, and live like I used to. I'll take the energy for now if that's the best I can get and I'll keep on keeping on. So the short version is things are the same except I'm going to add the Cat's Claw back in as an additional method of antibiotic.

WOLF School

Last week I had the perfect opportunity to return to WOLF School as a naturalist. I had 15 really cool kids from a Montesorri school come and visit. We had the camp to ourselves, it was really nice. On Monday I took them and their many awesome parents on a short hike into the redwoods and to the rhododendron garden at Monte Toyon. They really enjoyed getting inside the hollow redwood tree, seeing banana slugs, and learning about the albino redwoods. It was an early day for me and a long day, and I had fun getting back out there on the trail and playing with kids. I was so tired by the end of the evening I almost had a total melt down. I just don't have the endurance to move around that much these days.
Then, on Tuesday I met them at Natural Bridges State Park Beach. We collected beach treasures, made sand creatures with interesting adaptations, went on a solo hike, made friends with poison oak - a lot of poison oak, and visited the tide pools. That was a lot of walking for me and my knee started to hurt. I was grateful when it was over, but also would have loved to spend a whole week with those kids, they were really neat lil ones.
It was really nice to be out there doing what I love. I wish I could be doing it all the time, but after two days it was clear that I'm not quite ready to head back for reals. I will be however helping out with running a program in May. That should be easier because I won't need to be on the trails which will help me to conserve my energy. I hope the weather is really awesome when I go back. Camp Rocks!