Category Archives: Health

We’re still here, but man Cory and I are weary!

Many people are asking what is next?  Where we are?  When we are coming back home?… all these answers are still hard for us to come up with.  We are trying to figure out what is next, we are still here in Hawaii, and we wish we knew when we’d be coming back home.

There are no simple answers right now.  What we do know is that the cold was the reason my extreme pain was set into having seizures.  We know that since coming to Hawaii I have not had one single seizure.  I am still experiencing lots of pain, migraines, major neurological symptoms, and I am barely getting any sleep.  However… given the seizures being gone, the fear of our nights turning into horrible pain and seizure episodes on the kiddos faces slowly fading, Cory realizing that does NOT have to be our normal over here, all make me feel like there is no reason to even complain about the other symptoms at all!

We need to find a short term solution to our property/home in Bend so that we can afford to rent a place over here (we thought prices in Bend were high!?  LOL).  So… if any of you know of someone who is needing a short term, furnished to the hilt, beautiful large home just minutes from town and yet so private and secluded… please send them our way ASAP!

I am continuing to take very strong antibiotics, antiparasitics, a gazillion pre and probiotics, detoxes in every way possible, and I am doing my darndest to stay very, very warm at all times.  (much easier over here than in Bend’s snow… but believe it or not, Hawaii does indeed have a winter season as well.  We have had many cooler days, gobs of rain and I literally snuggle under a heated blanket even here to keep the seizures away!)

We are weary of the constant battles we’ve been facing.  We won’t give up…  instead, we will rest our weary souls in Him!

Please pray for these things:

Complete healing in my body.

No more pain in my stomach

No more migraines

Sleep Sleep Sleep

Lucy has been sick with a bad cough for almost 3 weeks now

We need housing

We need our home in Bend to be rented out ASAP

Cory will be leaving us here to go home and pack up our personal items so the house can be rented out right away

Wisdom for health and housing decisions

And… a huge prayer request for our family who just lost my cousin to a snowmobile accident.  He left huge holes in the hearts of his wife Amy, his brother Jeff, his mom Candy, and all of us who loved him soooooo much!  Cole loved Jesus with his whole heart and is out of pain here on this earth now… but the sting left to those who loved him here is immense.

We are praising God for:

The ability to be here at all

No seizures since arriving

Less stress about how each night will end

and that His mercies are new each morning… His faithfulness is so GREAT!

We love you all and are soooo thankful for your continued love, support and prayers!

Keep on Living IT Out!

XO

Sincerely, Dani

Lucy is loving surfing and getting pretty good at it too!

Grey is still our happy little one! You’d think all three of them were born here as they just seem to fit right into everyday life!

Hayden is quite the surfer these days! He pretty much lives for the day after school and housework is done… he’s addicted and is so fun to watch!

Once again, it has been too long since my last post…  but this time there is finally a good reason for the time gone by.  On December 23rd after beginning some new and very strong medicines to fight off this horrible disease “babesia”, I began having insane bouts of pain in my head and stomach which led to a long night of seizure episodes.  These seizures and horrific pain nights became a daily/ nightly occurrence and each night I became more and more weak and less able to fight through the pain.  After a few nights in a row of too many tears to count, having to be “jaw thrusted” so that my breathing would start again countless times, my left eye twitching to the point of being very achy, my right hand and arm convulsing so much that it completely cramped up, and amounts of pain that I have no words to describe… I found myself going through these nights without tears and with no fight left in me.  I hadn’t given up, I was just so exhausted from the pain and the work that it takes to make it through each night.  I told my mom at one point that “I had no more tears to cry.”

Bend has been having some very, very extreme cold weather this season and I was noticing that each time I was outside even for just a short time, my joints would begin to seize up.  My knees and back were the worst by far and it was debilitating for sure.  But what was worse is that these spots in my head along with my neck would tighten up so much immediately when I got cold and then these tightened spots would knot up resulting in the severe pain each day that led straight to seizures.  I was having anywhere from 12-30 seizures EACH and EVERY night.  One day, these started at 4pm which means that it was no longer possible to hide what was going on in my body from Grey.  In the past these would not start until about 8pm… so she was naive to this and I wanted it that way.  It absolutely broke my heart to see her sweet face as she would hide, cry, and be so afraid.  And it broke her little six year old heart to watch her mommy writhing in pain, crying, and fighting with all I had.

Cory and I knew that these episodes were definitely onset by the cold and some by the medicine that was new to my body too.  We had to find a way to get out of the cold quickly if there was ANY chance, even a small one that these episodes could be lessened.  Thankfully, Cory’s family is from Hawaii and has a home that is being remodeled and we are able to stay here for a little bit before it becomes a rental property.  My parents literally bought us one way tickets over here and less than 48 hours later we hopped on a plane and made our way to warmth.  Praying the entire flight that this would in fact work… we were DESPERATE for relief… all of us needed just a glimpse of hope!

Well… we made it after 21 hours of travel, over 6 hours of delays, etc… and God has been answering prayers.  I have not had any seizures since arriving in Hawaii.  It is winter over here too… which means there are some cooler days.  I got pretty cool a few days ago and never recovered and that night was full of really bad pain, but thankfully no seizures.  It seems that my body is very, very sensitive to the cold, so overall this is a great place to be.

Beach time!

I am beyond thankful for the relief.  Thankful that there is a home we can crash at.  Thankful for plane tickets. Thankful for my brothers vehicle over here.  Thankful for a doctor who will treat me long distance.  Thankful I homeschool the kiddos and we haven’t had to skip a beat.  Thankful that Cory works for himself and is portable.  Sooooo very thankful for less fear on our kiddos faces, less stress on Cory each night, and less pain and no seizures for me!!!

Please pray for:

-wisdom for our next steps

-seizures to stay away

-pain to continue getting better

-lots of work for Cory… we still have all our bills at home and lots of new here

-friends over here

-complete healing for all five of us

God is good all the time and I am excited to see what He has for our family in 2017.  Thank you for your continued support, prayers, and love on our family.

“Live It Out”

Sincerely, Dani

XO

Creative Writing, and History on the beach today!

My bro and his sweet girlfriend made us an amazing homemade dinner… it was delicious! Thanks Joel and Ally!

I’ve been wanting to sit down and write this update out for quite some time now… but you know how life just keeps running off ahead of you?  Well, tonight I’m making it happen!

Lucy Lu was helping push my last IV of the day!

I’m still at the doctor daily receiving IV treatments to detox all these dead Lyme toxins from my body.  These IV treatments are also used to kill off the other two co-infections that I have.  I have also been doing a very strong and complex herbal protocol to try to kill off the Babesia and Bartonella.  However, no matter how much or how long I do this herbal treatment along with the intense IV treatments, I have not been able to kill these other diseases and they have to go!

I have been researching through the night endlessly, waiting for a breakthrough in treatment options, hoping for new research in the Lyme community, praying for wisdom, and I have come to realize that the ONLY option I have left is going to be some very, very intense anti-parasitic and anti-biotic treatment.  I have NOT wanted to go down this route as Lyme Disease destroys your immune system, hormones, thyroid, adrenals, etc… and I’ve been working so hard to rebuild all these systems since Germany that it feels so backwards to take these drugs knowing that they will work against all these areas once again.  However; I am out of options and Cory and I both agree that I have to start walking down the path to kill these terrible diseases off now.  We cannot wait until the awful symptoms from them continue to increase.  We have to get me well so that we can treat our kiddos and continue to work towards a healthy family!

Soooooo… now I have to decide which meds to take, weigh out the pros and cons of each drug, and work on the financial side of whatever path we decide to go down.  I am super stressed about the possibility of my seizures coming back, the pain overtaking my body again, and what our lives are going to look like as soon as I start this new treatment.  We know, just as it did when treating Lyme that I will get worse before I get better.  We just don’t know what that “worse” will look like this time around and I am scared.  I will be making a choice that effects my hubby, kiddos, parents, in-laws, and siblings so much… I am not sure if I can handle watching the intense fear that plagued those I love most again.

Please be in prayer for our decisions, for our finances, for our entire family to have peace and strength as we start wading through this next phase ahead of us.

We are praising God for the opportunity to forge ahead into this next phase that would not have been possible without an effective Lyme treatment in Germany and positive detoxing here at home!

Sincerely, Dani

I’ll leave you with a quick update picture style of our last couple of weeks 😉

Straight out of “Grease”… Hayden and Lucy were off to help at our Church’s Big Pumpkin Party!

And don’t forget Mary Poppins who got to enjoy all the festivities!

Family time at the Veteran’s Day Parade 2016! Thank you to ALL who served and sacrificed for our freedoms… We are so grateful for your service!

I mustered up all the energy I had and we ventured out to Devils Lake for a photography field trip… these three sure have great eyes for photography!

Man, I LOVE these three…

This little one is pure sunshine!

Lu and Gig sitting in their “box cars” studying verses for Awana’s Drive-In Movie night!

Just some fun anatomy lessons… and dancing of course too!

Hey all…  we could use some encouragement and prayer!

Even though we are now rid of ALIVE Lyme Disease in our bodies, we are filled with dead lyme bacteria.  It is so toxic.  When you kill it off it releases toxins into your body and you have to work tirelessly to get it OUT!  When I went through two hyperthermia treatments where my body was heated up to 107+* for several hours each time… the spirochetes (lyme bacteria) were killed off and my body was plagued with sooooooo many toxins.  Cory went through this intensive treatment as well and he too is full of this dead and toxic junk.  Because of these toxins we are still at the doctors office 4-5 times each week.  Every single day we receive IV infusions helping us to detox.  This will be our new normal for a LOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG time.

We also knew before heading to Germany for Lyme treatment that I have two other co-infections living inside my body… both from the tick bites that gave me lyme disease:  Babesia and Bartonella.  Our doctor has a plan for working towards killing these infections now that lyme is dead, but this is going to be an intense treatment and a lengthy/ expensive one as well.  With this killing of more bacteria will come more herxing.  I am very nervous that the herxing will involve the intense pain that overtook my body causing numerous seizures and much fear in our home again.  I have lots of decisions to make before starting this next round of treatment, and I still have a lot of questions to ask and research to do… but we know that we have to continue pressing on and striving to find complete healing.

We are struggling… a lot! .  Our symptoms have changed for sure, and many are for the better.  With Lyme being dead, those symptoms from lyme are gone… but now there are new ones from Babesia and Bartonella.  We are both suffering with loads of headaches, neither of us has ever felt fatigue or tiredness like we are right now, I am in pretty constant pain in my legs from the cold (even though it has not been too cold here yet:-( ), Cory is struggling getting any amount of sleep, and the list goes on…

What we need right now:

Prayers!

Please, please pray for wisdom for decisions and strength to FIGHT ON!!!

For energy, concentration, sleep, strength both physically and emotionally.

Pray for our kiddos who are without us often.  They are worried about how we are feeling.  Grey is struggling with us being at the doctor so often, and they just need a break from this yuck!

Our praises are HUGE… we are so thankful for dead lyme disease, for not having had a seizure since August 4th, for my constant migraine that lasted about 6 months being gone, and for an incredible doctor and his team here in Bend able and ready to help us get to health!

Please continue following, sharing, praying and helping us… we need each of you alongside our family in this battle!

XO

Sincerely, Dani

Philippians 3:13-14 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Here is another quick update that was posted on Facebook as I was super duper sleepy after two very long days of traveling… I promise to post a full blog entry very soon!

We have just arrived back home! Safe and sound from Germany… So excited to sleep in our own beds tonight! So much to be thankful for… Parents that took care of kiddos and us, parents that took care of our ranch, animals, burnt up pump, and made us a clean home to come back to, sisters and brothers who helped with animals, picked us up from the airport, and everyone who prayed us through… We are home and ready to continue fighting onward to health and healing!
#prattstrong
PS… Grey was happy to be home… But overly tired😁

Sincerely, Dani