Catching Up

Do you ever really catch up?  Surely, you do not get ahead.  Before Mommahood, you would never catch me doing anything last minute.  Most of the time, I was ahead of schedule.  What’s changed?  Well, on top of my usual activities, I now care for a young child 24/7.  This means ensuring he eats three nutritious meals, 2 snacks, and has plenty to drink per day.  This means changing 6 diapers a day.  This also means providing entertainment (for his sanity and mine).  Since September, it’s meant caring for a child with a virus about every two weeks…what gives?  I love this “work”, caring for a little being.  It’s work because of the amount of effort I put into it.  Somedays it requires more effort than others.  I wouldn’t trade this time with my son for any job.

The last few months have required more effort on my part.  Mainly, I have not been well myself.  I’ve been plagued with frequent heart palpitations and runs of sinus tachycardia for no apparent reason.  It’s not caffeine.  It started in the fall of 2009, a couple months after Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.  However, it was only severe once in December 2009.  I became pregnant in March 2010 and the palpitations disappeared and my chronic Lyme symptoms subsided until July 2011.  I had been breastfeeding my son for nearly eight months at this point.  Suddenly, I had recurrent/persistent yeast infections of the breast.  My child was also infected multiple times despite treatment.  During this time, I noticed some of my usual Lyme symptoms reappeared.  By late August, the severe heart palpitations and tachycardia returned as well.  Of note, I started menstruating again in August.  I note this because I now think (hope) that the palpitations and tachycardia are hormonal.  The time I started experiencing palpitations in 2009 coincides with the time I quit taking birth control.  Logically, I started myself back on the same birth control pill in hopes of curing the palpitations.  I’m crossing my fingers.  If this doesn’t work, I might be talking to Dr. Zakib about an ablation, which is almost as high on my DO NOT WANT TO DO list as valve replacement surgery.  Yes, I also have moderate pulmonic regurgitation as well as mild mitral and tricuspid regurgitation.  The Cardiologist doesn’t think this is related to the palpitations and tachycardia though.  The thought behind  the origin of the valve malfunction is my history of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.  No one gets valve replacement surgery until their life depends on it.  It’s not taken lightly and requires one to be on blood thinners the rest of their life.  Just goes to show how something seemingly benign as a tick bite can metastasize into a chronic illness affecting the entire body.  Of other interesting news, my thousands of $$$$ lab work came back negative for Lyme.  In 2007, a western blot had me positive for Lyme (highly probable).  Now negative.  A CD57 (this test cost $2,000) was also negative for chronic Lyme.  What does this mean?  Who the hell knows.  I can’t explain it with my limited knowledge of immunology.  The one thing I did take away from these results is the fact that it would be extremely unlikely that the illness was passed in-vitro to my son.  This has given me a lot of peace.  Nevertheless, I doubt that I’m cured.  My symptoms that I have always associated with Lyme still wax and wane.  My guess is it’s hiding elsewhere.  Since most of my symptoms are neurologic in nature, that would be my guess as to where.  Still my Lyme symptoms are more annoying than problematic (numbness, tingling, vision disturbances, arthritis, headaches).  The issue/s with my heart is not only worrisome, but limits my physical activity.

However, I didn’t let it keep me from throwing a BIG BASH for Levi’s 1st Birthday.  It was important to me and it was a success.  Thanks to my sister and brother-in-law for really helping me pull it together on time in the kitchen.  Thanks to my parents and grandmother for helping me with decorations and set-up.  Thanks to my fiancee, Jamie, for supporting my party idea to the end.  I couldn’t have pulled it off without their help or at least not without a trip to the ED for a syncopal episode.

Many thanks and love.

By the way, in lieu of gifts, Levi’s guests contributed $195.00 and 10 different toys to Trevor’s Treasures!