This dose was interesting because not only was it the toughest to date, but I also learned I was taking the medicine completely incorrectly... (Insert face palm here)

So I took dose 4 and within hours I was miserable. I hardly slept that night, the next day was what I would equate torture of my stomach to be, and the following night/day just kept getting worse. By Tuesday (which just so happened to be my birthday) I was in so much pain that I really couldn't move. I was curled up in a ball totally not understanding why my usual go to stuff wasn't cutting the pain. Stomach pain like I can't even explain. So I had my mom contact the head Dr over at Deseret Biologicals to ask if this kind of severe reaction is normal.

Long story short I was taking the medicine improperly. It was my knowledge that I put the vial under my tongue at once and hold it there for a minute and then swallow. This is how my other 2 Series Therapy treatments worked so I just assumed they all worked the same way. This is when I found out I was supposed to take the contents of the vial, put it into a bottle of water, and sip it slowly throughout a 12 hour day. NOT take it all at once. Hence my ridiculous and incredibly painful die off herx I was experiencing. He said to take probiotics to absorb the toxins in the stomach (weird right)? I had never heard of that before but I didn't argue. I took a large dose of about 70 billion probiotics & within minutes I felt like a new person. My stomach cramp lifted, the gnawing ache that was at a 10 on the pain scale melted away, and I was so happy I cried. It turned my weeks of hell around so quickly. Very thankful.

I wish I could say that continued forever but my stomach only tolerated a few of these high doses before it actually created more problems than good. So it was kind of a trade off. Either way I am instructed to take 5-6 days off treatment to recover then go back in with vial 5 this time correctly. So.. I will be posting how that goes in a few days.

Hopefully no one else makes the mistake I did, but if you somehow landed on this page and are reading this because you also did it then stop and break!! I really didn't think I could physically get through the next 45 days (or however many I had left) in the shape I was in, and still am in. I hope to recover and have an easier time with the rest of treatment. I'm sure it won't be a walk in the park but any amount of less awful I will take!

Until next time

Xoxo,

Christina

Dose 3... What can I say about dose 3 except insert a picture of a skull and cross bones? Oh man, this one was a doozy. In fact I had to wait an extra 2 days to take dose 4 because that's how intense it was. Basically it's kind of like every tummy symptom you can imagine happening at full throttle around the clock. That's the only way I can describe it delicately. This treatment is seriously no joke. If you have had a long standing infection of Giardia then unfortunately getting rid of if is no walk in the park. But it just solidified that this was a major part of what has held me back stomach wise and I'm just thankful to have sometning available to me to treat it other than antibiotics. I'm on to dose 4 now, I'll report on that in a few days!

- Christina