My health has been returning since I quit the Lyme Disease antimicrobials, which had been making me sick to the point I was thinking about death a lot.

My energy is back most days but I have to watch my heart rate and heart rate variability with an app that alerts me when my heart rate is too high. I am my worst following a day when I was feeling great and then did too much. Something about mitochondria not powering my muscles. It plagues people with “long Lyme,” “long Covid,” ME, and others.

I wear the armband all day and watch my “pace points” and try not to go over my limits. And so I am doing quite well. I’m learning to sit still more often which used to make me feel guilty, but I’m getting over it.

I give myself two hours without screens every night before bed (with rare exceptions, like now) and enjoy the quiet time.

My social life is expanding. I’ve spent hours recently on the phone with friends, mostly from years and decades ago. In town I occasionally meet with friends. Sometimes friends come to visit.

Mostly I value my solitude. Serendipity has had videos pop up about autistics being like this, so I feel confirmed in the rightness of my habits.

My sense of purpose has been up and down, but that feels appropriate for the huge life changes I am in right now.

I feel hopeful, and enjoy my design work and physical work in this house.

My plans for the 40 acres have evolved and then been canceled or postponed, depending on how a few conversations continue over the summer. I hope to have a plan for it by fall.

My brain sometimes fatigues for days in a row, but then I have good days – enough that I can begin catching up on the things that I got way behind on over these last nine years.

My heart also demands the quiet time. The “at least one” heart attack I had has left one of my chambers not working quite right. Back in the 90s, an EKG detected my second ventricle being a little slow. An echocardiogram recently showed one chamber of my heart is enlarged.

For me, that means some days I feel real weak. But then other days I feel able to do almost anything I want, and I might work most of the day, but now I pace myself better and don’t move so fast.

This morning, I watched while Josh and Scotty blew insulation into the attic. In preparation, last Tuesday I asked Josh to put down better catwalks across the rafters, and then I went up to look at something and coach Josh, when I realized it really wasn’t a one-person job. So for the next two hours, I was crab-walking across rafters four-feet apart while hunched under rafter struts 3 feet from the attic floor, and turning around and occasionally other sorts of unusual movements.

(Over the decades, I’ve kept in shape pretty well until these last few years, and have always kept my flexibility. And I still strongly welcome every opportunity to be physically active, and I am really happy I can still do things like this.)

After doing that work and all the next day, my muscles were incredibly sore. But today I felt pretty good. I was glad not to be climbing up there again, glad to be taking it easy, and I’m grateful to be in such good health.

The big issues that have been bothering me about my health this year, I’ve been dealing with. I’ve seen my nurse practitioner and naturopath, had tests and imaging, and none of them are too serious.

My heart is the biggest concern, so I’m taking supplements and amending my diet to clear the calcium from my arteries and support my heart in every way I know. And I wear the armband daily so that I don’t stress my heart. Or I don’t do that too often!

My left knee I still am conscious of and move more carefully because of it. I just got an MRI and will talk to the doctor about it next Tuesday, I believe it’s going to show that I have a little break on the edge of my meniscus cartilage, and if I am careful there’s probably nothing I need to do.

My neck is interesting. Looking back on my whole life, there have been 3 main things that have not been good for my spine. First, when my orthodontist tried to “fix my jaw” which he’d just called “too masculine” by moving my teeth forward so that I couldn’t chew or speak properly unless I pulled my jaw back toward my neck – that caused a constant tension in the back of my neck, as well as various other symptoms of TMJ which bothered me for 58 years – until Invisalign moved my teeth back to their natural location (almost there )and of course that has had some effect on my spine – so I’m wondering how this new positive readjustment for my jaw might affect my neck.

Next thing to challenge my spine, learning how to walk like a model, we girl-women were all told to “tuck our butts.” That flattened my lower spine which has changed the shape of every vertebra throughout my spine. I’ve been working to change that bad postural habit, unsure how much I can accomplish.

And then I got the concussion and whiplash seven years ago.

My last x-ray shows my cervical spine making almost a right angle, I think between C3 and C4. The orthopedist said it “was scary.” When I asked her what sort of solution she had for a scary neck, she said, (of course) Surgery. I then asked for a referral to a physical therapist, and I just had my second appointment there yes@day. I’m feeling really good about it.

Being able to crawl around in the attic like I did two days ago, and then be able to do everything the physical therapist asked me to do my first days there, and then just know that I can twist and turn in every direction and move my head freely (only a crunchy or two) – is great. I just need to build the right kind of strength in my neck.

I’ve been off all my Lyme medications for maybe six weeks, and life has been on a bumpy but upward trajectory. Every now and then I feel a pin prick here or there (Lyme syndrome), so I will get another blood test in August.

I’ve been getting blood tests for the naturopath about every four months. In the beginning I had high blood counts of about eight different viruses, bacteria, mold, etc., all typical of Lyme. In my most recent test, every single number was underneath not only the American Medical Association’s threshold, but underneath the lower, independent Lyme researchers’ threshold.

I am also getting tests for a bazillion other good markers, like vitamins, minerals, hormones, etc. The few foods and formulas she’s prescribed for me have brought me back into balance.

Every morning when I wake up, I work a selection of favorite games in the New York Times and correspond with my sister, sharing our scores and commenting about them and about our days. I figure it’s good to check in with someone daily, for anyone living alone, and it’s also a brain check daily. I’ve heard a lot of people have strokes and don’t even know it, so I figured these games can be something to let me know in case that ever happens.

Then I get about my day of cooking healthy food, remembering all my supplements, and attending to house cleaning, maintenance, watering plants, taking care of the cat, and taking care of my list of to-do’s.

Spiritually, I feel I’m coming out of a 30-year Dark Night of the Soul. I know I have Helpers on nearby dimensions. I have documented scores of experiences that assure me of their existence. I have been healed by them as well, quite a few times.

For what purpose? I don’t know. But every challenge I’ve faced has taught me something I’ve realized I needed to know.

And I am grateful for my life.