Day 99 | A Sad Conclusion

Well, last night was rough. Not nearly as awful as the insomnia of the past but still pretty rough. It was my first night of insomnia in months. It took me a long time to fall asleep, I tossed and turned, and woke up a lot in the night. I did not feel rested at all when I got up this morning. Plus, I had a sore throat and my pain was still elevated. Oh dear. This is not a good sign. It’s probably Ramona.

She slept in a crate on the floor of the van and even with the windows and doors wide open, it still affected me. I was so discouraged. I didn’t have the energy to do much of anything this morning so I laid on the picnic table and rested. Brett did the laundry and made salad for lunch.

I tried my best to stay away from Ramona and by mid-afternoon I was starting to feel better physically. I had a little more energy and a little less pain. Brett and I talked and decided that my family should probably take Ramona back for tonight to see if I sleep better without her.

Then while I was working on my writing, Ramona looked at me with those big puppy eyes and started begging for me to hold her. I tried to resist… I really did. In the end though, I gave in. Brett recognized my foolishness at once and took her from me. I on the other hand, didn’t recognize my foolishness until a minute later when I started to feel achy, tired and foggy brained. What have I done?

I decontaminated and after that, I stayed away from her. It was so hard! When my family came to hang out this afternoon we didn’t do hugs. That was hard too!

We enjoyed our time together but sadly, I got nauseous halfway through my dinner and wasn’t able to finish eating. Another old symptom popping back up?

We decided to go up to elevation with my family afterwards and take a short walk. Maybe the high altitude could help denature whatever mycotoxins might still be hanging onto Ramona’s coat?

We went to Sylvan Lake for the first time and it was so beautiful up there! We had a nice time together. Brett and I walked in front and my family walked behind. I was grateful we could all be together but I couldn’t help wishing we could all walk side by side!

(Later this week, I’ll be posting an adorable video of Ramona on my FB page.)

Sadly, the clear increase in symptoms I’ve had from being around Ramona and my family has confirmed that we need to keep being as careful as possible. It’s not that I’m unwilling to put up with fatigue, insomnia, numbness and nausea while they’re here. Honestly, if I knew there wouldn’t be any long term repercussions I would be more than happy to accept a minor relapse in exchange for family hugs and puppy cuddles. It would be so worth it if I knew I could just bounce back after a few days away from them.

Unfortunately, research on this kind of mold hyper-reactivity is almost non-existent and there’s no way of knowing how many exposures I can take before crashing again. At what point have I gone so far that it will take months to climb back up to where I was? At what point will the tick borne infections get reactivated? I don’t have answers to those questions and I really don’t want to find out by making a horrible mistake. So, I’m just going to have to be grateful for what I have and do my best to stay afloat.

By the way, Brett and I made a beautiful PDF of my favorite resources for suffering souls. I created the content and he made it look fancy with his superduper graphic design skills. It’s available for free to my email subscribers. Click here to sign up and receive 5 Resources for the Suffering Soul.