Be the healer you desire
As woo as it gets, baby.
Just as I was settling in for lunch, theatrical thunder gave terrifying vibration to our very old windows and doors. Water fell in capacious sheets while I sipped on steaming broth and delighted in the show. It was brief, maybe 30 minutes in all, but it surrounded us, menacing, mighty, magnificent. As lightning lit up the pregnant sky, I suddenly felt a kismet between its wild electric spasms and my own neuropathic tingles and jolts. The erratic sensations in my hands and arm made total sense while in kinship with what was happening in the sky. It was almost rhythmic, cracking, white light touching down in the field as my finger fired off a spark in return. If one can find any joy in neuropathy, this feels like as good as it gets.
There are many theories about why people develop Long Covid. At this point, as a diligent researcher, I have read them all. There’s the lingering virus idea, that the wretched spike protein is maligning your intestinal wall or some other snug space within your tissue causing your body to fight and fight and fight. Or, your central nervous system got thrown way out of whack during the acute phase and won’t calm the fuck down never mind carry on in any orderly fashion. Or, you have the infamous micro clots that like only one test can identify (? WTF) and it’s in Germany or South Africa and so best of luck if you can’t get there and get in line.
A new theory links Long Covid to preexisting anxiety and depression, which is frankly the one I find most fascinating as it speaks to something larger than one particular individual’s body; it acknowledges their context, culture, and history. This also falls in sync with theories around the brain holding the body captive, so to speak. That for those of us without any evidence of structural damage- for me, clean cardiovascular testing, clean pulmonary testing, awaiting what I imagine will be clean spinal MRI neurological testing- the ongoing pain and symptoms, which are very much real, are actually governed by our neurological response to them, which is informed by our, you guessed it, context, culture and history. This idea emanates from leading edge research around pain science, beginning with the very polarizing Dr. John Sarno and now advanced by folks like Dr. Tor Wager and Dr. Howard Shubiner. If this sounds too far out for you, good. I invite you to join me here because, truly, what have we got to lose? Until a single physician, and I’ve seen many, can understand what is happening inside of my body and actually offer me relief, I’m going rogue.
I tested positive for Lyme IgM antibody last week. As I typically take a daily ramble around our orchard and pasture, it is not at all unlikely that I could’ve missed a nagging tick during my routine checks before entering our house. But I called ‘no way’ right away. Before I took an hour to research Lyme testing protocol, I just knew it wasn’t contributing to what I have going on. I declined my neurologist’s recommendation for 21 days of antibiotics and asked her to push further into analysis; could this be a reactivation of Epstein Barr Virus, as is commonly seen in Long Covid; what bands did it affect and how many? She obliged, which makes me feel a tad warmer about her, and sure enough, false positive. Throughout this five day period of unknowing, I actually believed in my intuition for the first time since this disease has taken hold. I looked past the diagnostic, felt into my body and my reason, and I didn’t panic. I really barely worried. (just a tad between 2-3 am on Thursday night)
This is a shift. Not unlike my fascination between lightning and my dancing neuropathy. Nor my genuine curiosity around reprogramming my brain. I feel an opening that was entirely opaque six or so short weeks ago that has nothing to do with diagnostics or how much I’m accomplishing each day. A friend of mine, offering up some thoughts during a particularly grim moment, threw her hands up in the air, jubilantly, and said, ‘Ok, here’s an idea. What if you just become the healer you desire?’ I think she was onto something. (Thanks, M)