But I don't SEE your Lyme, now you do.

This is what LYME looks like...

When I flared a few weeks ago I told my husband... You can't usually SEE how bad I feel.

THIS is an example of what is happening inside my body, everywhere, every day. Ailments are mysterious and rotate. It is those who don't see us, but who know this disease, in other states and countries... who CARE the most—we find you in the groups. Those looking right at us, DO NOT SEE this. And even when they can see it they are oddly shut down to it. Or sick of it. Those who live with you think you look "just fine" most days and wonder why this has gone on so long. Yeah, we wonder why too but we are slowly figuring it out through trial and error. Today my knees, sinuses and teeth hurt. I often wonder how long I will live … I value time… People. Moments. EVERY moment. I mostly pray I just live long enough to see my son become an adult. (Search for quotes from Avril Lavigne or Alec Baldwin as they were pretty certain they might just die.)

This flare occurred after taking a homeopathic cold/flu medicine. I took it testing to see if my 4 year old could take it. In a rush, a moment where my usual “check everything, auto-immune compromised lyme-hat” would kick it… it went out the window. Oops.

The first ingredient is a (Bryonia) a kudzu-type plant, within an elderberry cold/flu HPUS med. (Note: I love straight elderberry—this was homeopathic).

Bryonia (kudzu) is a very invasive vining weed, “devil’s turnip”; it wards off predators, hence it is used in herbal or homeopathic therapy.

The knot on the far right appeared within an hour. So far, I only found one person who used something similar and had a terrible reaction as well.

Bartonella (one of my co-infections) makes cysts, so that is my best guess!?

One person said Strep, but who really knows? With a lyme herx (reaction to anything you do, or a healing crisis), you often do not know what causes the reaction. Often times it is food, or a shower (hotter water)… The list goes on with every herb, oil, medicine we take, or change in weather, moon cycles, (add mercury in retrograde now, this occurred during that time and the last mercury it locked my shoulder up). You name it, we herx, even from the wrong vitamins or something you wouldn't consider like coconut oil, garlic, stevia, etc.

So.... after this herx, I tried to epsom salt detox soak right away and it blew up, or the inflammation dispersed out (which seemed better at first than the very hard scary nodule).

Eventually, it ended up inflaming my entire hand, for days, and I could barely grip anything without pretty intense pain. After soaking with ACV (Braggs Apple Cider Vinegar) a potential bartonella track appeared.

And after a clay pack, these weird under-the-skin spotty things (photo appears raised but it was not). The brown "age spots" appeared after I started treating Bartonella.

The inflammation and knot/nodule finally reduced and the pain is gone. There are a couple knots hiding there, maybe three. Sometimes it looks like it is near small blood vessels, (Bartonella goes where it wants), and I often get little cysts on my wrists as small as the blood vessels appearing as within and I roll on essential oils and they eventually are gone next time I look (I also take internal) and don't track the coming and going very well. I sure notice when my entire arm is numb however.

As my acupuncturist said... perhaps your body encapsulated something there to protect you.

When you attempt to knock down these germs they often cyst up, to avoid being truly eliminated (usually on a cellular level and not seen).

They are called persister cells for a reason. I will be sticking with my oils: oregano, clove, cinnamon to get persister cells—amongst other helpful oils. My body still herxes on oils, but oils seem to agree with me more. Each person is different, so everyone has to experiment. I’ve had this stuff going on almost 2 years now. I've not posted pics before now (perhaps I will retroactively).

This cyst seemed ganglion (though not at my wrist), so I considered it "not that" right away but was the first best description. And then my search, I finally found an RA nodule... it seemed to most closely match rheumatoid arthritic nodule (which would be a misdiagnosis for lyme of course). The online photos I found of hands with these nodules seem like that of a 100 yr. old person, which I may feel quite often.

Those with Lyme get rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, also within that diagnosis can present as rash, vasculitis, or livedo reticularis. So often misdiagnosed, as are those with diverticulitis, migranes, ADD, anxiety, bipolar, chronic fatigue, depression, early Alzheimer’s, Fibromyalgia, lupus, multiple sclerosis, sleep disorders, thyroid disease, impaired attention, focus, memory, speech, disorganization, slower mental processing, impaired breathing, air hunger, foot pain, teeth pain, rotating pain, hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, ... etc., so many more. I list many on my site at the Lyme tab, along with other herxes.

Lyme is the great disease imitator.

“Rheumatoid nodules are also a sign of inflammation and heightened immune system activity.”

We have to be careful how we treat. Most everything creates inflammation and we are not supposed to boost our immune system too much as it is already going off the rails.

So what happened to my hand? … We don’t know.

But THIS is Lyme Disease.

Retroactive herx: I have this photo handy today. Most likely one of my first photos? Foot flare: October 2016, first time hitting Bartonella. I limped for about a month. It hurt to bear down weight on my foot. My chiro taped my foot and that helped a bit. Otherwise, lots of oils and many epson salt foot soaks (which flared me at first) and I could slowly make the water hotter.