Medicine, Medicine, Medicine

As I am sitting here typing this, I can see my medication filling up 1/4 of our dresser. It's amazing to me how all these drugs don't interact with eachother, or maybe they do, lol. Brian went to Target and bought me the largest pill organizer you could find as I have a bad habit of forgetting what drugs I took and when. lol Now I feel like an eighty-year-old grandma with her pill box. Ha! Brian thinks the pill box is cool as he loves to organize things. I can't say I am the same, but I am glad he is getting some joy out of this.

Praise the Lord I have not been allergic to any of the medication. This first batch we are taking are a combination of supplements and drugs to calm down my autonomic nervous system. They are supposed to help me sleep better at night and make my system not so reactive, or "jumpy" as I like to say. At the beginning the only annoying side effects were that floating head feeling, dizziness and an occasional headache. However, last night I started not sleeping well and we are having trouble with an elevated heart rate. It's lovely to be laying down resting and feel like your heart is running a marathon. The problem is we don't know what drug is causing it or if my system is just doing it's crazy thing of not following the text book response. Yay for that (that is dripping w/ sarcasm)!! I really need to be on these drugs to prepare my body for the upcoming heavy antibiotic therapy, so we are going to try to make it through. The heart rate isn't too high yet where it would be dangerous and we are praying it will stay that way. Maybe my system just needs to adjust to the drugs. We are praying that way!!

My Mom came last Tuesday and is staying with us until August 4th. It has been a blessing to have her here to help out as I am trying all the drugs and dealing with the not so pleasant side effects. We have had a good visit so far and thanks Mom for being so willing to come down to help!

Below is an excellent video in which my Lyme Disease Doctor, Dr. Joseph Jemsek, talks about Lyme Disease, patient advocacy and the errors in our current health system. He discusses the need for more patient focused care. He is wonderful and I wanted to share it with you! To watch the video, you will need to scroll down to the bottom of the blog and click on the pause button on the music player so both won't play at the same time. :)



We still have not heard whether Brian's appeal for the denial of his financial aid (because of his undergraduate credit hour total) has been approved. His advisor didn't seem to be too worried about it being denied, but we are waiting to hear from financial aid. Also, Brian's hours have been cut at work which unfortunately probably sounds familiar to many of your own experiences. We are making it, but any extra income in August would help pay more of our medical bills.

So, that leads us to our current prayer requests:

-Please pray that I (Dawn) will be able to keep tolerating the medication I am required to take and that side effects would diminish. Especially the elevated heart rate. It's exhausting to feel like your heart is running a marathon without you with no trophy at the end (lol) and then on top of it not being able to sleep at night for the same reason.
-Please pray that my (Dawn) application for graduate school would be approved at the University of Colorado for admission for the Fall of 2009. I applied late, but the school said they would do their best to get it approved for a fall start. I am excited to have something to focus on during treatment. It will be a great distraction as I battle through.
-Please continue to pray that God would provide financially for the medication and medical bills (that insurance will come through for paying most of the costs), through approving the financial aid appeal for Brian's student loans and finally for more work hours for Brian before his school begins.
-Lastly, please pray that God would continue to be our source of peace, joy, and hope. Our faith has been stretched in so many ways and we are thankful for God's mercies and his continual provision. We look forward to the future with great expectation of all that God will do!

Thank you again and again for your prayers and support.

Blessings,
Dawn

-One more thing, someone let me know that for some reason our blog was not allowing comments unless you had a specific account (gmail, AIM etc). I have changed that setting and now you can post anonymously, which doesn't mean that you can't add your name, it just means anyone can now post without the restrictions. :0)