It’s been far too long since the last update… and I apologize. I did post this update on Facebook and I know that lots of you have seen it already, but for those that have not yet, here it finally is:
Cory and I are officially 100% Lyme Disease free… We have to detox all this dead bacteria out of us, which is going to be quite an intense process ahead. We are beyond thrilled to come home this week and begin detoxing as well as starting treatment to kill the other two known co-infections that I have in my body. We would LOVE prayers for safe flights and travels for all 7 of us tomorrow and Tuesday, prayers for wisdom on our next steps in finding treatment for our three kiddos as well as wisdoms in my next treatments!
We are doing the happy dance and praising God for all He’s done so far… Thank you for sharing and praying with us… We love you all!
Im sorry it’s been such a delay in my posts… My mom quickly updated to let you all know via FB that Cory and I made it out and into recovery safely! I needed to take some time to rest, recover, and work on keeping up with the detoxing game!
I know that I’ve stressed it before… But we began intense detoxing before coming to Germany for about three months and I know that it was very beneficial for us both, however… Keeping up on it with all of these thousands of dead bugs needing to be expelled is incredibly important now too!!!
While here, Lucy got a pretty bad head cold and they always turn bronchial in her quickly. Then my mom got it, now Cory and I have it currently and Hayden had a small bout with a cough too. So far, Grey is in the clear as is my dad! PTL👍
Please pray we recover from this nasty bug quickly and can continue releasing toxins at a rapid rate so we can return home healthy next week!
In the meantime, we are not wasting any precious days while here… We are grabbing each moment and making the very most of it with each other! Here are some pics from our weekend adventures when our hospital treatments are very limited!
We rode the gondolas up the mountain and then had a beautiful and very steep hike up to the tippy top of Mt. Wendelstein!
This village dates back to the 700’s😁
We are standing on a ROMAN ROAD… Mind blown by the history here!
That castle is above the Roman road and is now a very expensive and elite boarding school.
You now drive through the village walls that were once where the gates hung.
Silly kiddos… Wanted to grab the clouds!😜
Soooooooooo steep, rugged and beautiful.
Hanging on tight to his baby😁
Trying to find the stairs up to the castle…
Please continue to keep us all in your prayers for health, complete healing, safety, and for those helping us back at home as well… Corys parents are holding down our fort and our irrigation pump seized up… Making it very difficult to water the property, water animals, and just plain keep things living in the amazing heat y’all are having back home!
Today was an amazing day out on Lake Chimsee exploring a castle, riding on three ferries, five trains and walking a lot! Here’s some fun pics of our family time! And after we got back to our room… Fireworks started… Super great and exhausting day! Sleep tight!
Sincerely, Dani
PS… Stinkin internet here won’t let me post any pics to the blog tonight, and I have sooooo many great ones!😁 Go look on my FB page and you’ll see them!😜
Were trying to work hard around the property today so that we don’t leave for Germany for a month and return to all ten acres being taken over by weeds and it looking like a jungle… While I was able to pull weeds for only about 10 min I was struggling with fear. Fear of taking our whole family to a foreign country and exposing everyone to harm. Fear of the world in which we live in and the unknowns that present themselves daily. Fear of health. Fear of… You name it! I had to quickly reel my thoughts in and remember that our God, who made Heaven and Earth… Made everything in it… He is soooooo much bigger than all of this. I can give Him my worries and fears, He can hold them with just his pinky finger if I’ll let it all go! That’s the key for me at least… Letting it go. Not picking it back up again and again, but actually leaving it at His feet! He’s got all of this. He has our marriage. He has my kiddos. He has our travel plans next month. He has our safety. He has the doctors hands. He can handle it ALL!
Holding onto this simple truth… I hope you are too!
Sincerely, Dani
And because I’m having to take it easy today… I’m extremely weak and fatigued… Look at the gorgeous and fun views I’m getting to take in… Love each of them so much!
Wow! I knew that Lyme was all over. I knew wholeheartedly that it was here on the West Coast, and without a doubt in Bend, Oregon… But to hear over a hundred personal stories from people in the last two days has blown my mind. Not the number itself, but the amount of people who have been so afraid to speak of it out loud. People who have expired doctor after doctor and feel hopeless.
Its for these people, my husband, our three kiddos, diseased friends whom I’ve met at the doctors office, and myself that I cannot stop sharing, talking, blogging, and won’t stop fighting for health, answers, and a voice for a disease that makes so many feel alone and isolated. This disease desires to break you down so much that you have no fight left in you, it drives you to severe depression, it eats at your brain, it causes aches so deep you can’t walk, impaires hearing, sight, breathing, memory, heart rhythms, causes seizures, pain like I’ve never known I could feel, and a constant migraine that grates on you so much that daily life is never the same. We have to keep fighting for funding, acknowledgement, and answers!
Please continue sharing these posts, please pray for all these people that have reached out, please help our family financially so that we can be healthy enough to make waves and fight on for all of those that cannot fight for themselves…
Today was another really, really long day, but a successful one too. My sister had a dentist appointment scheduled for today, and was going to reschedule so I was able to hop into her spot and have the rest of my amalgam removed quite spur of the moment. I am so thankful that it is all out and we can move onto treating heavy metals later this week. Then we all rushed back into Bend (my dentist is an hour away), and I had to get to my other doctor appointment early to heat up my veins in hopes that they would not collapse again. The heat helps them to expand and not go hiding away… (if I were them… I would have run away a long time ago after thousands of pokes!). I was able to receive my Artesinate IV which targets one of the main co-infections that I have called Babesia.
Babesia feeds on the protein in iron which is called Ferretin. We finally also got an answer to my ALWAYS crazy, scary low levels of ferretin. This has taken years to discover. I used to go into a clinic every 4-6 months and would get six infusions of ferretin over the course of two weeks. This was painful and extremely costly. I would test ok for ferretin for about 2 months and then it would quickly disappear until I was into single digits again. When my ferretin is this low I have zero energy, my strength is lessened, and yet it also makes it very difficult to find rest or any sleep. This can be dangerous, but now that we have an answer to what is consuming my ferretin we have to keep a close eye on my Hemoglobin and Hematecrit levels and only if they drop too low will we begin immediate injections of ferretin again. We definitely do not want to continue feeding the babesia bacteria like we had been for so many years past.
After the doctor… we switched our cell phone carrier so that our international rates were much more affordable for our trip ahead. Each little step completed gets us a bit closer… Germany is coming so very soon!
Please keep me in your prayers tomorrow as I am starting some new, intense treatments and they can always increase my “herxing” (Herxing is believed to occur when injured or dead bacteria release their endotoxins into the blood and tissues faster than the body can comfortably handle it.) We believe it is important to begin these treatments since they will have to start them in Germany, and it will help increase my comfort level while in the hospital if we can work up to the levels that I will receive abroad.
This is going to be a quick post tonight. I am not feeling well, and maybe it’s because I have been at doctors appointments most of my day. I started the day extra early, which is NEVER easy for me… I don’t sleep until early hours of the morning, and today I had to hit the shower at 6am. I was at the dentist for round #2 today of amalgam removal, and I will have one more appointment next week to finish up the process before we can start treatment for heavy metals.
Then I had an appointment with my doctor here in Bend to set a soft catheter in my arm for the week… however, my veins were not wanting to cooperate today, so we ended up just getting two IV’s. I will head back to the doc tomorrow morning to try the catheter again tomorrow morning!
I then wrapped up the day with having my hair extensions put back in… what a great feeling to get all freshened up!
And…. just in case anyone forgot that today is 7-11… we made sure to get the kiddos their annual free slurpees at 7-11. This year Cory had to take them, because my day didn’t allow, but how cute is this crazy pic of my crazy bunch? Man, I love them so much!
Please pray for:
No mercury poisoning symptoms tonight/ tomorrow like I had last week
That my veins are easy to set the catheter in tomorrow
Provision for all areas of life
Kiddos who feel secure and for the nightmares to end tonight
Endurance for Cory as all areas of life are tugging on him hard
Healing for my body, Cory’s body, and the kiddos bodies
There were so many blessings along the way as well…
My Uncle is my dentist!
My Aunt is my dental hygienist!
I have the greatest hairstylist/ amazing friend!
My IV drugs made it through customs in Germany and to the doctor just in time!
My parents took me to Prineville for my dentist appointment for half the day!
My sister let Grey come over and play so she was distracted and having FUN!
Soooo… in short, God is good… all the time!
I am so crazy exhausted after this day. This is too much for me on most days now, and I am going to hit the sheets about two hours earlier than I usually do! Good night everyone!
This has been such an ongoing battle for me for about these last 8-9 years now. My hair has never been amazing or coarse, but it was long and I had lots of it. Almost a decade ago now my hair started falling out by the handfuls. Although at first I suspected it was just part of having babies and it would recover eventually, this was not the case for my head. My hair became more and more fine, it has become very brittle, thin to the point of not being able to cover up my scalp in several areas, and it has slowly broken off to up above my shoulders and above my ears in some parts too.
I know, I know… this is not the end of the world, however, I believe that God gave us hair and that it is part of the beauty we see on people’s exterior. I also know that true beauty is on the INSIDE. For me personally, this is a battle I have had to fight in my own heart. I have three kiddos and two of them are daughters that I never want to view themselves in the light of their beauty being dependent on wearing makeup, having a perfect figure, wearing the most designer clothing, or what hair they may or may not have. I also know that there have been soooooo many drastic changes in my health, emotions, appearance, and overall feeling and some of these vary greatly from day to day. Because of these unknowns that I cannot EVER be in control of, I have been wearing extensions in my hair for the last 8-ish years off and on… mostly ON! I have struggled with thinking it was vain. I have had several heart to hearts with my kiddos about what beauty is, what beauty isn’t, and why I have chosen to change a part of me for the time being. I have cried on my husbands shoulders about it more times than I can count. For some reason, hair for me is one thing that I can be in control of with extensions and they help me still feel like a girl. And you know what… regardless of how I am feeling each day, if I can get out of bed just long enough to brush my hair and put it up in a ponytail or maybe go to the doctor with curls in it… I just plain feel better all over!
I just took my extensions out tonight… I have to take them out and have them put back in about every 6 weeks or so!
These are them… They will be re-taped in tomorrow evening!
I wanted to share this info because I’ve overheard many conversations bashing ladies for having “fake” hair. I want to encourage people to have grace with others. Whether you agree with something trivial like extensions, makeup, or other things that don’t really matter at the end of the day, they do not change a person’s heart, and maybe, just MAYBE they are dealing with something out of their control that you would never know and they just need a moment, a day, or a cute ponytail to feel a tiny bit better overall!
I may have extensions in my hair, it may be fake, it will never define me, but I am ok with them and am incredibly thankful for the people that donate their hair for my extensions and literally thank God for them each day that I brush or wash them… because of those women, I too can feel like a woman on the outside while striving to be more like Christ inwardly every moment for the rest of my life!
I also have to say a quick THANK YOU to the world’s greatest hairdresser, sweetest friend, and huge blessing in my life: Jenna Ringer… you have done my hair so amazingly for soooooo many years! I am blessed by you friend! XO
One month till we land in Munich, Germany! Today Cory started all of his testing for co-infections, Lyme Disease, and a full panel work up. We became bandage buddies and I finally have a partner in all these pokes… Eeeeek!
We also got our international drivers licenses!!! It’s getting closer and I’m getting more nervous, but the kiddos excitement to see another country is a welcome distraction from all that we are facing in the near future!
On one more note, after a lengthy doctors appointment this morning, we have decided to catheter my arm so that I won’t be continually poked all week, every week… This is going to be helpful, but the reality of the severity of all of this somehow set in with just that one simple piece of news… Please pray for peace for all of us, and that little Grey, who is at the age where she’s realizing that her mommy isn’t like lots of other little girls’ mommies is going to be seeing more and more visible signs of this disease. She is also struggling getting used to me being at the doctor every weekday… She is crying when I leave and asking for extra cuddles and attention. The big kiddos seem all too strong until a “bad” night is upon us, and then fear sets in. Please pray for protection over their thoughts, that their young hearts can handle the extra burdens and that they be filled with JOY in it all! Pray that Cory is given Gods wisdom in all areas of providing for and protecting our family. Pray that he has productive days for work, enough energy to make meals, and can let down and relax/ laugh even in the mundane day in/ day out trials.
Thank you for sharing in our Beautyfull Mess… We treasure each one of you on this journey with us!
Once again, it has been a while since my last post here for many reasons. There have been some really, crazy hard days and nights filled with much pain, we are pressing through the hard times and savoring the good times. We had Lucy’s 11th birthday as well as Cory’s birthday yesterday, took a spontaneous camping trip for one night at a local lake and enjoyed the Independence Day with family and friends after starting it off with a full morning of being at the dentist. We have fought fiercely for good days… we need them more than I can express right now after having such a rough couple weeks.
Along with some of the fun activities we have had, we have also done TONS of research, asked so many questions of doctors, and have settled on a course of action that will take our entire family as well as my parents to Germany on August 5th. Cory and I will check into the St. George Klinik in Bad Ailbing, Germany on August 7th through at least the 21st. My parents will be taking care of our kiddos while we are in the hospital receiving treatment to irradiate the Lyme Bacteria from our bodies. This hospital is the only place in the world that offers this specific Extreme Hyperthermia treatment and they only treat Lyme Disease and Cancer patients there, both with great success. We will also be undergoing extensive detoxing treatments, testing, and other things that are yet to be decided until our arrival. Though we are very, very hopeful that this treatment will get here and be over with so that we can move onto the post treatment protocol and be one giant step closer to being able to do all the things we dream of doing as a family… I am filled with nerves, worries of the unknowns, and all the travel logistics for our family. I am of course nervous of being put under general anesthesia for seven hours two times for each of Cory and myself while our bodies will be heated up internally to such high temperatures that it will kill the disease causing bacteria in our bodies. We know that this treatment is what we are supposed to do, but doing it is still filled with unknowns and fears.
Please pray for our family in this soon- coming journey, Please pray for peace, wisdom, safety, and many, many, many good days ahead! Please pray for finances to be in place, please pray for our kiddos to feel safe and secure as their parents are starting to have daily doctors appointments and that is unsettling to them. Please pray for overall healing in all five of our bodies and strength and health for the five of us and my parents as well.
I know that where He leads us, He will be with us.
I will be journaling here on my blog this 30 day count down until treatment starts next month, so please read along, share and pray when you think of us.
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