In June 2011, I was experiencing extreme fatigue for a few months. I have several businesses that I own and I was always doing many things all at the same time. I went to a walk in clinic in Toronto near the restaurant I own, and the doctor did some blood work. The doctor called me back for the results and told me I had very low B12, around the 100 range. He said I was to start B12 injections weekly. I did this. The problem with the B12 injections was that they were giving me methyl cobalamin and people with Lyme cannot have anything methylated. I should have been on cyclobolamine.
I was into three treatments when I came in from gardening, (I have a farm I spend 3-4 days a week in Orangeville) and the next few days I started getting shocks that ran thru my legs. The best way to describe it is, like putting your hand in an electrical socket and feeling shocks throughout your body. I did not immediately go to the doctor, as I thought it had something to do with gardening, finally after about two weeks, I went to the doctor and he booked me for a CAT scan of my back. It did come back I do have stenosis of my spine.
The pain and discomfort I experienced was overwhelming most of the time. I felt sick most times. I was throwing up, and if not nauseated. I remember now having a rash in between my breasts for awhile.
I was not working anymore since July 2011.
I woke up one morning to have no ability to walk, almost like my legs were numb. I was and have experienced some tingling, shocks in my arms as well. I went to the Emerg at the hospital in Orangeville. The doctor said there was not much he could do, I said the pain and discomfort was a constant and he gave me Oxycocet. I took one, never took another one as they did nothing and just gave me a more foggy head than I already had. I am back and forth to doctors to no avail or any reason why I am experiencing this discomfort.
I go to a physiotherapist around the beginning of November 2011. I am looking for any relief I can find. She tells me I need to check myself, preferably into Trillium Health Centre, to have tests done. I am assigned an internist.
One of the first questions I ask the doctor is could I have Lyme disease??? The doctor says Lyme disease does not exist here, end of discussion. They do a ton of tests on me, nothing. At this point, I am shuffling when I do walk, to help alleviate the pain, I am in a wheelchair and can hardly move my legs.
I was separated in September 2009, so most of the health care professionals said it was the stress of this etc. etc. that I had developed something in my brain that did not allow my brain to be working with what my body was suppose to be doing.
When I left the hospital, I knew I did not have cancer, tumours etc, which was great but I left with the same discomfort I had come in with and symptoms. They put me on a couple of anti inflammatories. Nothing was effective.
Thru Health Check I was able to finally get a family doctor. She originally put me on Nortriptline. I found this again ineffective, feeling of being sick, unwell and shocks to date have never subsided. She put me on Gavapentin and this was very helpful in getting my mobility back.
A couple of weeks after this, I was going into Orangeville, and I saw a huge sign saying information night on Lyme disease. I was thinking how could Lyme disease not exist, yet they are having this info night here. I met three ladies with Lyme disease from Orangeville, actually until recently, I did not realize the lady in the farm before I bought it from her, had Lyme disease herself. The symptoms we shared, were too uncanny and so enlightening. This is where my journey began to research a Lyme literate doctor to see if that could be what is the matter with me. Dr. Ben Boucher, came to me as the best in this field to hopefully offer me assistance. It is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with this each day.
I am now on 1200mg of Gavapentin three times a day. This is still not completely effective although it allows me some mobility with the assistance of canes for short distances. I now experience “seizure like” episodes throughout my body that last from anywhere from 3-5 minutes that are very, very, painful.
It is like the life I once had has been stolen from me. I spend most of my days in bed.
I was once extremely active, enjoyed outdoor activities and now everything needs to be planned in minuet detail to allow limited activity for me or I will “pay for I” and end up in excruciating pain again for days.
I have started seeing a naturopath, to help build up my immunity again so that my body is able to fight whatever I have better.
I started treatment with Dr. Boucher in May 2012. He is on the east coast of Canada. He puts me on a herbal supplement that I have to build up drops on. I have Hercs reactions, which I am suppose to have but this lessens my ability to walk. I am bedridden. In Sept 2013 he starts me on doxycycline and I cannot tolerate this drug. I am throwing up, bedridden and experiencing flu like symptoms. During Christmas I am in and out of the hospital, I also get pneumonia.
In Feb. 2013, I find out Dr. Boucher is going on sick leave.
Lyme disease has taught me about life and to not live with any regrets…if you have chronic Lyme disease , do not ever lose hope of getting better.
I see my experience as a blessing because now that I have gotten a second chance at life, I am going to live my purpose, be me and not waste time on meaningless junk. It is my turn now and now I want it to be yours too.
My journey to wellness I want to share with you in the hope that it might help someone ….somewhere.
Brenda Bot 😀
“So, goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can’t plant me in your penthouse
I’m going back to my plough.”
Well, maybe not back to a a plough exactly, Sir Elton, but I will say that the road sure is a lot less yellow-bricked and a little more muddy, these days, that’s for sure. But, it’s also a whole lot more fulfilling, too. You see, I started out in life on a dairy farm–with wide open pastures where you could actually see the whole sky and smell the musk of the hay and the sour of the cow poop and hear the steamy fresh milk squirting down into the tin bucket early on a chilly fall morning. But, sometimes, as time goes by, a young man gets to feeling that he needs to prove himself in other ways, in a world that he feels is somehow “bigger” than the confines of a farm and a meadow and an early-to-bed.
So, since college seemed to be looking for recruits, I enlisted. And, when they discharged me–just to make sure what they thought they had taught me actually worked— I squeezed into a suit and roped myself inside a tie and escorted a briefcase to and from the city, Monday to Friday, on one long extended errand we all refer to as “business”. Turned out, I wasn’t half bad at “business” after all. I traveled, I poked my head into a number of ventures and I even bought a nice car and some other nice shiny stuff. Did that for thirty years. A man can get pretty darned bored doing the same thing for thirty years, no matter how much stuff they give him for doing it. So, one day I decided to trade-in my silk suits for cotton flannels, my Oxfords for rubber boots and my briefcase for a tractor.
Now, they say you can never really go home again–because “home” will never be quite the same–on account of the very fact that you left it in the first place. Still, going back to a place like where you started out sure is a lot like going home. And so for that reason, here we are at Peaceful Valley farm.
Now, I suppose I ought to have mentioned my co-conspirator, Brenda (also known as “Gram” to you kids) in all this–the love of my life–which, you all should know, is the most important thing anyway. So here’s the thing: Gram and I are going to tell you everything about the farm and our experiences here–the good, the bad, the happy and the sad; me in my way and she in hers. Only difference is, my stories will actually be true.
So hang up your pitchfork and pull up a haystack and sit on back and have a listen.
The Joys of Farm Life
“Who can take a sunrise
Sprinkle it with dew
Cover it with honey and a miracle or two?
The Candy Gram.
Oh, the Candy Gram can
‘Cause she mixes it with love
And makes the world taste good.
Who can take a rainbow
Wrap it in a sigh
Soak it in the sun and make a groovy berry pie?
The Candy Gram
Oh, the Candy Gram can
‘Cause she mixes it with love
And makes the world taste good.
The Candy Gram makes everything she bakes
Satisfying and delicious.
Now you talk about your childhood wishes:
You can almost eat the dishes!
Oh, who can take tomorrow
Dip it in a dream
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream?
The Candy Gram.
Oh, the Candy Gram can
‘Cause she mixes it with love
And makes the world taste good.”
Wow, thanks Sammy, that’s a glowing tribute. But you didn’t mention the maple syrup—I can work wonders with that too. Good stuff just seems to grow wild around here and I do admit to baking-up a trail for the grand kids to sniff-out all the way from the city to grandmother’s house just about every chance I get. They love running around and enjoying the 25 acres of heaven we are so blessed to own. They feed the horses and birds, pick up the eggs from the chickens, eat a peck or two of berries and play in the pool and playground Grandpa Tom made special for them to enjoy.
It’s true that we—or me, at any rate—were kind of farm newbies when we bought Peaceful Valley farm back in 2010. We’ve had our experiences with horses and cows and birds of many a feather, but now we concentrate mostly on the smaller animals—the chickens and the bees and other more stationary critters like maple trees and berry vines. And through plain hard work, my organizational skills and a penchant for list making—two things that Tom sometimes calls by other names—we’ve finally come into our own. And if, on a particular Sunday, we all need a bit of a sleep-in, I just go out to the barnyard and instruct the rooster not to crow.
But farm living isn’t all dungarees and pitchforks. Around here—where the flowers bloom like Geisha girls and the sunsets seem rouged by L’Oreal—it’s more of a compliment to mother nature than a contradiction that a lady of taste should harvest from her own silo of sparkle or barrel of bling from time to time. I mean, a girl has to compete with springtime somehow! If you should catch me in one of my many gardens, deep in mutual solicitation with my flamboyant cohorts—I to them with a pruning or a misting and they to me in a pageant of whispers that hangs like fairy dust just beneath the breeze—you’ll see that the counsels of beauty go both ways. I’m sure my grandfather, the Master gardener, cherished these bestowals as I am learning to.
Now if I can just bring myself back in from the garden for a moment, I’ll just say that I’d love for you to come with us on our journey of living and learning the ways of farm life. I hear that somewhere over across on the other side of the website Gramps is telling some stories, too, but without any of the juicy details and with all the dates mixed up. So stay put and you’ll get the full chronological renditions of stories of farm life, travelling, lyme disease (more on that later) sprinkled with all kinds cooking and baking tips. I even have a list of secret recipes as long as my arm, but you can’t have that…because my bracelets are on it.
Let’s talk some Grandma talk….
