This dose was anything but easy. Today my senses were so over the top bothersome. My ears in particular. Every single sound (even far away) felt like needles in my ear drums. Soooo painful. Certain pitches were unbearable. I laid in a dark, silent room for 24 hours and just waited it out. Even with my door closed I could hear a glass being set down on a table downstairs that would hurt. It felt like I needed sunglasses & noise canceling headphones to just function. I wanted to press mute on the world which was turned up to 200000x.
Even chewing my food felt like it was hurting my brain. Not a fun time.
I can definitely tell as these doses are getting stronger I am having a hard time with it. I try to detox as much as possible but there's only so much you can really do. Seriously struggling, but just counting down every last day. I can do it!

Vial 4 tomorrow...Only 2 more doses left after that for this first series. So close

Xoxo
Christina

Vial 7
The herxing has been mostly messing with my stomach lately. And my senses as well.. which has been a reoccurring theme. I can hear a clock tick a mile away sometimes it seems like.
Otherwise its been tolerable... I never know what a dose will or won't do but this has been mostly a couple of days of just feeling blah, hurting stomach, and overstimulated.

On a positive note I am at the halfway point of this first round of treatment! yaye! Well a little more then halfway there actually, I have about 13 days left. Which makes me SO happy. Then I will repeat what I just did, going in a different order though.

All of the posts about the Bartonella Series I add a Tag to it so on the right hand column you can access it all in one area. When you look under categories it will be there as "Bartonella Series." Clicking on it will have all of these posts in one lump place. I thought this could make it easy if anyone is doing a similar treatment or was interested in it and wanted to follow along JUST on this aspect, not the blog as a whole.

Vial 6
Vial 6 was not a pretty 3 days. I felt really miserable. From headaches, to insomnia, to stomach cramps, to dizziness & heart palpitations. It was all there to the max, so I just hid under my covers as much as possible & tried to get fresh air whenever I could.
Today I took vial 5 (dose 7). So only 3 more vials to go! Each dose is much stronger than the last so I'm just bracing myself. But feeling terrible is a sign that it's all working. Even though it's no fun to feel bad it's also a great indicator of success.
I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Xoxo,
Christina

Vial 9
At this point I'm so tired of feeling nauseous I think I'm over the idea of having children. Just the thought of ever dealing with morning sickness or purposely putting myself in a situation of prolonged nausea sounds ridiculous. I'll live quite happily with my dog with whom I'm already much too obsessed with.
Otherwise I get these wonderful headaches that feel like hammers to my head, umm my stomach is in knots that feel really soothing, and my sarcasm is on 10 out of 10 today.
But on a serious note, as much as I'm not sleeping lately or feeling terrible it's still another day I can check mark off my calendar. So that part is pretty great. Every time I get to throw a finished bottle away I get extremely excited. 
I'm not the most fun person to have a conversation with lately especially via text because I forget I'm even talking to someone until they text back something along the lines of "hello?" and then I realize I bailed on the topic like 30 minutes ago. So that's how my mind is working as of late. Its almost easier to not attempt an in depth convo so instead I've spent time reading. Mostly comedy because its easy to read, and takes my mind off current crazy of life. Mindy Kaling's book "Why is everyone hanging out without me?" is probably one of the funniest books I've read since Chelsea Handler's. Just really ridiculous stories that you can weirdly relate to. Highly recommend it for a laugh.
So overall I would say its always a level 5 of blah, sometimes goes to a level 8 or 9, but I'm trucking along. God is good, with me every step of the way. 

Vial 8

So one thing I've noticed is that as treatment goes along, different parts of my body flare up. This time I had a period where I was suppppper exhausted. It felt like no amount of sleep is enough. Kind of like I got ran over by a semi... My eyelids were 100lbs, and all I wanted to do is sleep, nap, relax but even then I felt tired. 

Headaches & lots of neurological stuff. My visual sensitivity was bothered quite a bit, I felt motion sickness from even playing a game on my phone. Vivid dreams and just weird dizziness, all that good stuff.

It's not constantly terrible, but I'm really superstitious & don't want to ever say I feel "good" because then I think it will go polar opposite. Sooo for now I'll just leave it at this.. Periods of flares come & go. Lasting different amounts of time but not always constant. 
Working on just staying positive & checking every last day off my calendar. These posts have been more negative/less upbeat, but I want to be really honest every step of the way. I don't want this to seem like I'm complaining, because I'm thankful I'm a day closer to recovery. But I said when I began this blog that I would be 100% honest with everything I feel. Right now it's not much good to feel so I'm sharing that as well. Times will change though & soon my overly joyful posts will take over! 

xoxo,
Christina

In a nutshell:
Brain fog
Mood Swings
Stomach cramps
Exhaustion
Fatigue
Chills
Hot Flashes
Nausea
Insomnia
Migraines

I'm sure I'm leaving something out here. Symptoms come almost as quickly as they go. Show up out of nowhere & then leave whenever they feel like it randomly. I'm lucky to have people surrounding me though who keep me laughing & having fun because it takes my mind off of things when they are pretty bad. 
Vial 9 (dose 3) tomorrow. Weirdly looking forward to it.

xoxo,
Christina

After taking vial 1 I was extremely shocked as to how quickly I got the classic Bart rash on my stomach & arms. I usually only get that triggered by heat or a flare up, so there was definitely a kick to it. 

The rest of the day was great, my appetite was wonderful, and it wasn't until I went to bed that my stomach started to ache. My stomach gives me worlds of trouble so I'm not too surprised to see that be where a big part of the flare is. I was up all night herxing (joy) but I detoxed until it subsided & by the AM I felt better. After that my stomach problems flared every so often, but I noticed it gets worse in the evening. Not so sure why, but that's what I've noticed. 

I spoke with my doctor as well who recommended I go backwards with this series & start at vial 10 and work to 1 (starting lowest dose & moving to highest). Of course I had already taken vial 1 when we decided this so in 3 days I will go backwards from 10-2. He thinks that will be less of a shock to the system. So that's why these post titles will seem jumbled when I start talking about vial 10. 

Thats all for now, next vial tomorrow. Fingers crossed 

Christina

In a moment of clarity I wanted to talk about the course of treatment I chose. It's not conventional. I didn't feel the right decision for me was to take loads of antibiotics with how fragile I am. It comes with a lot of risks & past experience has showed me my stomach has 0 tolerance for it.

The general idea of homeopathy with this system works much like a vaccine. I will be taking different doses of dead Bartonella bacteria. Each dose is a different strength. This will illicit an immune response in my body which will create antibodies against the Bartonella & my own immune system/body will do the killing. In conventional medicine the antibiotics kill the disease, but in this case it will naturally do what my body can not do by itself. By tricking my body into thinking there is much more Bartonella in my system than there truly is, it will go into hyper work mode building specialized antibodies to kill the active infection. 

It's pretty different from anything I've ever done but my doc has had wonderful success so my hope lied in the fact God knew what he was doing when he led me to this man to heal me. 

I take one vial every 3 days & the box says I will have the hardest time between doses 2 & 4. Here's to praying it's all wonderful by a miracle :) I'll update as much as I can for those of you who are following along. Thank you for the kind words & continued prayers. This particular treatment is the toughest hurdle yet so I'm laying all my fears at God's feet.

To follow along on my Bartonella Series Journey click on the tab above for my "treatment blog" which will chronicle each vial.

Xoxo,
Christina