I'm immersed in a lovely three-day holiday at Riverbend Hot Springs in Truth or Consequences NM. Nominally, Ma'ikwe and I are celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary—now just 10 days before our sixth. We had meant to mark this occasion nearer to when it actually occurred, but we postponed due to Ma'ikwe's poor health last spring.
The image above is of one of the Riverbend pools, where patrons can soak in warm water overlooking the Rio Grande River as it wends its way from Albuquerque to El Paso. It's a pretty nice set up.
We're also celebrating Ma'ikwe's rising return to health after a brutal 2012 battling Lyme disease, and, most important of all, we're marking that our marriage is doing better. In fact, much better. All good reasons to suspend normalcy for a few days of communing with hot water. (As someone who earns a living working with groups in hot water, there's a certain poetic justice about turning literally to hot water for rest and renewal.)
We arrived Tuesday afternoon and were being shown around by the proprietor, Wayne Long, when Ma'ikwe happened to mention how different the weather was here (in the 60s and breezy) than back home In Missouri, where they were coping with a forecast of cold rain. At mention of the (I'll show you mine if you) Show-Me (yours) State, Wayne asked where we were from. When we disclosed that we lived in the northeast corner, he shared that he had grandparents in Canton (only 45 miles to southeast of Rutledge). Well how about that? Then it got really strange.
When Wayne continued, saying he grew up in Missouri, we naturally inquired where. His answer was: De Soto. While this small town of 6400 (an hour south, southwest of St Louis) is best known as the boyhood home of our current governor, Jay Nixon, it was noteworthy to me because my daughter-in-law's grandparents, Bob & Juanita Purcell, live there and it's the headquarters of Purcell Tire, where my son, Ceilee, works.
Given that De Soto isn't all that big, I asked if Wayne had heard of Purcell Tire. Gobsmacked, he put his hands on his hips and replied, "My brother, Paul, was childhood friends with Dennis Flynn (the Operating President at Purcell) and Paul has a career with the company." Small world, indeed.
Dennis is my daughter-in-law's uncle, and both Ceilee and Paul had just been together in Phoenix for a meeting of Purcell executives. Here I thought Ma'ikwe and I were disappearing from the known universe into a sleepy town of 6400 noted for its warm water and goofy name, and we may as well have been the second coming of Ralph Edwards given how much we matched up with Wayne's World.
If you were paying close attention above, De Soto (named for the Spanish explorer, not the car) & Truth or Consequences (named for the popular '40s radio show, not an oracle working in concert with the hot springs, a la Delphi) have, for some reason, the same population within half a percent. I tell you the parallels between these two disparate places is downright Roswellian. (Speaking of which, Wayne was wearing a bright, rainbow-colored tie-dyed tee shirt featuring a green alien in the middle as all of this unfolded. Take me to your leader?)
With all these revelations going on during the first 15 minutes, you had to wonder what kind of mindbending experiences we'd have once we got into the hot water. Fortunately, Ma'ikwe hasn't been passing out (which was the unexpected highlight of our last trip together to a NM hot springs—see Adventures in Hydrotherapy for more about that). It has been spectacularly relaxing though, which is what we had in mind all along.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
You Can Retreat, But You Can't Hide
del.icio.usThursday, November 8, 2012
Unmet Commitments and the Erosion of Trust
This morning, Ma'ikwe and I woke up together in the same bed for the first time since Oct 15. That was a long stretch without rain. Naturally (given that we're both process wonks) we spent most of our time between eye opening and our first warm beverage discussing our relationship.
This is a tender topic. Ma'ikwe has been struggling with chronic Lyme the past three years, and the trip we are on now (attending a facilitation training in Ohio) is the first one we've taken together since January (other than to see her doctor). While my extensive travel allows me to make the money that supports the marriage, it means that I'm away from Ma'ikwe when she needs help—both domestic and emotional—thereby straining our bonds.
It's a Catch-22 where my attending to one need is inextricably linked to neglecting others. While navigating this dynamic would be hard enough, it's worse than that. We're also facing additional challenges:
o As she wrestles with long-term debilitation and near-constant muscle and joint ache, it's damn hard for Ma'ikwe to do meaningful work. This limitation translates into an erosion of her self-esteem, and she has found herself starting to resent that I have choices she doesn't (simply because I'm not sick).
o Chronic Lyme (as distinct from acute Lyme, which most often can be treated successfully with serious doses of antibiotics if taken soon after onset) can have a profound impact on personality. While some of these changes may be reversible with the restoration of health, we don't know: a) what portion, if any, of what's going of for her now in terms of a shift in how she feels about our partnership is due to the disease; b) whether those feelings will change even if her health returns; or c) whether she will ever recover her health—20% of chronic Lyme patients don't. That's a lot of ifs.
o Part of what's hard for Ma'ikwe is that she lives in a house that's not finished being built. It happened that the onset of her Lyme symptoms coincided with the start of work on her home at Dancing Rabbit in 2009. While that project is pretty far along, she doesn't yet have running water and that's a hardship that is irrevocably linked for her with my failure to complete the work on her cistern and water system. At the outset of the project I promised to install the plumbing and wiring and the work is still not finished.
Generalizing from this one constant burr in her saddle, her continuing need to haul water has become the poster child for the way I make promises I don't keep, and the way I prioritize other commitments ahead of the ones I make to her. Essentially, Ma'ikwe is questioning why she should stay in a relationship where her basic needs are so little supported by her partner. Ouch!
To be clear, I don't fail on all my commitments, or even most. Yet it's true that I regularly take on more than I can handle. Overfilling my plate means that things are frequently falling on the floor, and Ma'ikwe is tired of seeing her needs trod upon as a casualty of what she considers a character flaw. While there remain good things about our relationship, right now they are under siege. She's wondering if there's any realistic prospect of our manifesting enough time together to repair the damage.
To her credit, Ma'ikwe is sharing these heavy thoughts and feelings with me while there remains an opportunity to work through them. But, just as with her struggle with Lyme, there's no guarantee of a happy ending: there's only a chance. It's up to us both to make the most if it.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
A Change of Pace
I've just driven to the East Coast where I'll be promoting a new round of facilitation training (in North Carolina starting Sept 27-30), attending FIC Oversight Committee meetings, and participating in the annual Twin Oaks Communities Conference, Aug 30-Sept 3.
En route, I stopped over in Louisville (I've driven straight through from Missouri to Virginia many times over the years, but I no longer have any appetite for marathon driving and I do the trip in two days nowadays) and saw my dear friend Ella Peregrine overnight on Thursday.
For the past four years she's been battling myalgic encephalomyelitis (or ME). This is a refined understanding of what has heretofore more commonly been referred to as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The defining symptom of ME is post-exertion neurological exhaustion that is substantially unrelieved by rest, and not triggered by other medical conditions. It is way more than just fatigue.
While I have been following Ella's health for some time simply because she's a friend, I am all the more interested because her journey parallels that of my wife, Ma'ikwe, who has been suffering from persistent low energy for the last six months. To be clear, Ma'ikwe is suffering from chronic Lyme disease and does not have the same diagnosis as Ella, yet their sharply diminished energy budgets are quite similar.
In Ella's case, she can do about two things each week without risking a serious setback—and that's if she's careful not to do too much. For example, she can manage to swim in a pool twice a week if she doesn't add to the strain by driving to the pool. Or she could swim once and go to the library once. If, however, she does the driving, then it's more prudent to only do one of those things a week. If she goes overboard one week, she may have to wait several weeks before she can do any excursions again.
For someone with a vital life force and a strong sense of curiosity—which Ella has in abundance and are the bedrock of our friendship—it is excruciating to have to make such choices and exercise that degree of self-discipline. When I asked her Thursday evening (during the intermission of a lovely outdoor performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore at Iroquois Park—Ella chose to visit with me instead of a trip to the library or a swim this week) how many people diagnosed with ME experience a significant recovery of their health, she reported only about five per cent. Yikes!
Though the medical understanding of ME is evolving and those odds may yet change for the better, it is likely that Ella will never again enjoy the freedom and energy that most of us take for granted every day. While not giving up on the possibility of recovery, she is trying to figure out how to paint a colorful life with a sharply diminished palette (rather than lamenting that the tubes on certain pigments have been prematurely squeezed empty). Ella is an amazing soul and I cherish our opportunities to connect and hear about her journey.
Ma'ikwe's prognosis, fortunately, is much less grim, and I'm thankful for that. While there is considerable murkiness about the course of her illness, she bounces back much better with rest and expects to eventually recover from her debilitating battle—even if we don't know the exact route, or how long it will take to get there.
One of the most precious things I got out of discussing with Ella how she experiences her low energy was the importance of trying to meet the ill person where they are—which is notably different than how you remember them or how they were when you were first drawn together. It's about adopting a pace that works for who you're with, rather than expecting them to meet you where you are. It's also about trying to find the intersection of where I am and where they are with respect to how their illness has impacted their cognitive abilities. This insight is especially valuable for me, who typically goes through life with his foot mashed on the gas, and dances lightly from topic to topic.
I'm often impatient with repetition and am quick to tell where a sentence is headed before it officially arrives at its destination. Thus, I often have a response queued up before the speaker has arrived at a period. When a story or explanation is interlarded with trivial details, I tend toward irritation, longing for conversation that is graced with clean lines and crisp meaning.
When I contemplate some of the struggles that Ma'ikwe has had with me around her sense that I don't hear her accurately, I suspect that part of the dynamic is my impatience—that I haven't made an adequate adjustment to the slower pace dictated by her illness. Rather than blindly expecting her to cope with my stream-of-consciousness check-in style, I could work on slowing down my electron orbits to match hers and seeing if that might lead to better flow between us.
While that may seem obvious, it hasn't been. I want my time with Ma'ikwe to be comfortable and familiar. I don't really want to be careful; I want to be natural. Yet maybe I can be more caring without being more careful. It's a distinction I'm taking the time to sit with right now (instead of racing headlong onto the next email in my queue).
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Making Lymeade
Ma'ikwe and I had a heart-to-heart talk this morning about the strain in our partnership. While it's not easy to sort out how much of this is triggered by the onset of Ma'ikwe's struggle with chronic Lyme disease, and how much is revealed by her battle with a long-term debilitating illness, problems are problems however they're revealed.
The pivotal issue we worked on today was my emotional engagement about how her health issues are affecting me. Having witnessed the gradual diminishment of her energy level and how much she needs to focus on recovery, there has been a concomitant reduction in her ability to initiate contact with me, or to inquire about how I'm doing. (To be sure, there is still a substantial amount of sharing that happens spontaneously between us; I'm just reporting a significant drop off in what Ma'ikwe initiates about how I'm doing.)
In my attempts to adapt to this change, I made a parallel cut back on what I initiated about myself, for fear of putting her in a bind about needing to raise her energy to be present for what I'm sharing when she may not have that energy to give. From my perspective I was trying to be sensitive to her energy budget and not invite her into examinations where she'd either be at risk of: a) feeling bad for turning down my invitation; or b) risking exhaustion for rising to the occasion. I didn't want to put that pressure on her.
While that may sound good, my curtailing my sharing has had the consequence of Ma'ikwe not feeling as connected with me. Yuck! While she was right this morning to point out that she's never turned down an invitation to discuss what's happening in the relationship, I have seen her overspend her energy budget and crash afterwards. I've been sacred of encouraging her to do too much, and don't want to be seen as selfish (asking her to place her health at risk to attend to my issues).
Ma'ikwe made it abundantly clear how important it is to her that I not edit what I share with her, as the strength of our relationship is directly proportional to our emotional sharing. In an effort to be kind and appropriate, I was inadvertently starving the connection! Mind you, I was not declining to respond to a direct invitation. Rather I was not initiating in response to Ma'ikwe not initiating. Boy, does this get messy!
When we got past the hurt feelings surrounding this dynamic (it was a bumpy ride) I was able to share what's been going for me—including my fear that she might die on me in the night—and we were able to break through to a much more tender and flowing place. Whew.
Because Ma'ikwe and I don't live together (she's at Dancing Rabbit; I'm at Sandhill Farm, three miles away) we're ever mindful of ways we can interweave our lives. In that regard we've been successful in developing a joint career in process consulting, but the viability of that is challenged by the Lyme disease, which makes it onerous for Maikwe to travel.
In casting about for what she might do instead, she been inspired to focus on Lyme disease patient advocacy. Not finding it easy to get the information or support she craves herself, she's been inspired to develop that for others and it's given her a worthy cause to devote herself to that's within her energy range and doesn't call for travel. Having been dealt a bag of lemons, I love that she's determined to make lemonade. Or this case, Lymeade.
Ma'ikwe admitted today that she's worried that this new calling may lead her away from our marriage (because I don't identify with Lyme, this isn't my calling) but this wasn't a trigger for me. If she ultimately decides she's better off moving away from our partnership—because Lyme advocacy is where she can be most of service in the world and I'm in the way—then she'll be leaving me for the right reasons and I wouldn t want it any other way.
While I fervently hope that won't be what happens, and that we can find a way to stay strong in our partnership even if we're marching to different drumbeats, I am not afraid of the things that are outside my control. It takes all the energy I have to focus on the things that I can influence. My challenge is to stay vulnerable and transparent, and see what happens.
Who knew that partnering could be this hard?
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
On Having a Chronically Ill Partner
She had been suffering from symptoms (including joint ache, stiffness, fatigue, nausea, and occasional vertigo) for about nine months before receiving a definitive blood test in 2010. After treatment with heavy doses of the antibiotic doxycycline in the fall of that year, she enjoyed about 15 months where her health had rebounded to about 80% of normal. Then the symptoms returned around the first of this year.
Fourth, our styles of sharing are different. While I like to walk through what's been on my mind since we've last shared, in a stream of consciousness monologue that jumbles together the trivial with the momentous; the humorous with the vexing in an unedited litany, Ma'ikwe prefers to be drawn out and then listened to without interruption. If I ask questions (in an attempt to better understand a thread), she often feels knocked off center and disrespected. In short, Ma'ikwe offers me what she wants in return and then feels cheated when I don't track her stories accurately enough or quietly enough.
While none of these communication issues is peculiar to our marriage, they add to the challenge of our successfully weathering the Lyme siege.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Easy as Pie
While cancelling was disappointing, there's a silver lining—the training won't kill my wife. Ma'ikwe was going to be the lead teacher for the course, yet she's battling the debilitating effects of chronic Lyme disease and her energy is sharply limited. We were both concerned about the possibility of Ma'ikwe pushing herself to do more than she could reasonably sustain—given how important this opportunity is to her—and then paying the piper afterwards with further damage to her constitution. It was a scary prospect and one I'm glad that we now won't face.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
The Lemon and the Lyme
Ma'ikwe, Jibran (her 15-year-old son), Marqis (Jibran's father), and I traveled to the Chicago suburbs yesterday for the second visit to see Ma'ikwe's Lyme literate doctor. While her condition is not substantially different than it was at our first visit, back on March 20, both Annette (the doc) and I could see some good signs.
First, Ma'ikwe was able to raise her energy for the appointment. After a quiet six hours in the car to get there (which she was dreading) she was noticeably more up-tempo for the 60 minutes she had with her doctor. While I've seen Ma'ikwe raise her energy on demand before—as all good facilitators can—six weeks ago I don't think she could have done that. Thus, I observed at least a modest uptick in her resilience.
Second, she had introduced a new protocol about two weeks ago: working with a Rife machine, which emits electromagnetic waves in specific frequencies aimed to be disruptive (even lethal) for Lyme spirochetes and other tick-borne parasites (such as babesia). For the last fortnight she has done daily sessions of about 30-45 minutes where she is bathed in a series of frequencies targeting the bad guys. She typically conducts these sessions right before bed and the most notable immediate result is that her sleeping has improved dramatically. Since good sleep is an important component of healing, this is definitely hopeful.
Based on her progress with the Rife machine, and lack of demonstrable benefits from her other treatments—doxycycline (an antibiotic), raw garlic tincture, lauricidin (a coconut oil derivative), grapefruit seed extract, green clay, and lumbrokinase (an earthworm-based enzyme)—Annette advised that Ma'ikwe take a break from the first four listed above while continuing with the Rife machine, the clay (for detoxing), and a variety of dietary supplements. After another four weeks we'll see if there's any more improvement.
Ma'ikwe is happy to comply. In addition to possible stomach irritation caused by the garlic, Ma'ikwe is uneasy about taking antibiotics for weeks on end and doxycycline carries with it the side effect of making her hypersensitive to sunlight (and it's hard staying indoors now that the weather is so nice).
For all of that though, Ma'ikwe remains sick. She still has good days and bad days; she still has almost constant muscle and joint ache; she still has significantly diminished energy and stamina. So she's not nearly out of the woods yet. While her night sweats and hot flashes have decreased, her emotional irritability and mood swings are ascendant.
Last night, despite an immediate bounce from digesting Annette's cautious optimism, she was exhausted by the long day and even a hot bath was not enough to soothe her aching body. Awake late, she starting fretting about how hard it is to ask others to support her when there's no clear sense of how long it will take her to recover, or when she'll have the energy to pay back the kindness that others extend to her. How long will she be down?
While I did what I could to reassure her that together we'll get through this challenge, she reported this morning that her anxiety persisted after I went to sleep, and she was borderline nauseous the whole ride home today. Yuck.
These days, one of the mainstays of Ma'ikwe's emotional support—in addition to family—is a Facebook group dedicated to people who suffer from chronic Lyme disease. (I reckon these days you can find anything online: from left-handed French horn players to one-legged bocce balls jugglers.) For the most part this has been a godsend. Whenever Ma'ikwe experiences a new symptom—no matter how weird—she can immediately go online and post a note about it to her support group. Virtually any time day or night she'll get 10 responses within 15 minutes. It's amazing! (Both that there are always that many people available to read her postings; and that they actually have relevant stories to share.)
Ma'ikwe's Facebook support group has been a decided help in helping her to stay grounded and to not feel so isolated in her healing journey. Whenever she's having a bad day, the support group reminds her that others have it worse, and that some have succeeded in going through her same symptoms and coming out the other side. Her misery has definitely been ameliorated by having company.
That said, it's also true that the Facebook support group skews things toward the stories of people who are not getting better; toward the folks whose energy is only sufficient to type (or to type cast). Those who are recovered—or well along the way—tend to move on with their lives and leave the chat room behind. [For more on the complexities of my wife's reliance on Facebook, see my blog About Face from March 12, 2012.]
Two weeks ago, the dark side of the support group was partially illuminated when Ma'ikwe innocently asked what toll chronic Lyme played on partnerships. In reply, someone stated that this tends to fall into one of three categories:
Category 1) Relationships tend to survive when both partners have chronic Lyme. They can support one another and have deep empathy for what each is experiencing.
Category 2) Relationships tend to do OK when they're started after the chronic Lyme has manifested, so that both parties have a fair idea about what they're getting into. (Think Florence Nightengale.)
Category 3) If not in categories 1 or 2, relationships tend to fail.
That particular sharing did not improve Ma'ikwe's mood, and led to a tender conversation with me in bed one morning. (Don't miss the importance of Ma'ikwe's being willing to discuss this with me—that was a good thing.) Naturally, Ma'ikwe is concerned about the lopsidedness of our relationship while she battles Lyme disease:
A. Financial support
She's too sick to do much right now to earn money, so I need to be the bread winner for both of us.
B. Work together
We are both deeply involved with the Fellowship for Intentional Community and we enjoy working together as process consultants. However, Ma'ikwe has been so sick that she canceled coming on the last two trips. This is a double whammy: not only does that mean I lose her input on the work; I also lose our time together.
C. Low libido
As Doctor Annette explained, when your immune system is compromised, your sex drive is one of the first things to be parked (as the body deems it nonessential relative to other hormone functions). While touch and tenderness never go out of vogue, it means we're working with a more limited vocabulary in expressing our love right now.
D. Irritability
Along with compromised stamina goes diminished resilience. Things that Ma'ikwe could tolerate with grace in the past, are now grating. Things that bothered her before, now bother her more. Knowing that this is happening helps, but only so far. She wants me around to be a help (see E below), yet not so much as to be irritating. This is a delicate dance.
E. Extra domestic burden
Ma'ikwe and I maintain separate households: she at Dancing Rabbit; I at Sandhill. In consequence of her low energy, it's hard for her to keep up with normal domestic chores, such as cleaning, cooking, washing dishes, recycling, emptying the compost, etc. When I'm at DR, I try to do as much of these routine tasks as I can, to lighten her load.
F. Visiting each other
It's much easier these days for me to go over to DR than it is for Ma'ikwe to travel to Sandhill. In consequence, there's a gross imbalance between the amount of time we spend at her house compared with the amount at mine, and I'm the one that mostly needs to sort out the logistics of the commute.
G. The burden of imbalance
Ma'ikwe is fully aware of these imbalances and it weighs on her that things are so lopsided. Yet what can she do lacking the energy to turn things around? Pushing me away (to not further run up the "deficit") can't be the right answer. We need to keep talking, to keep cultivating our emotional garden, and to concentrate on her healing. Restoring balance will have to wait.
H. The burden of initiation
Even the dynamics of discussing our dynamics work against us! Knowing
that Ma'ikwe has a limited budget for engagement, I am circumspect about when I initiate "heavy" conversations. I tend to wait for her to indicate when she's chewing on something and has the juice to tackle it. Unfortunately, by taking this course I increase the chance that Ma'ikwe will find that irritating in and of itself and we may immediately find ourselves at D.
Ufda.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
The Winter of Our New Contentment
Half a century ago (1961), John Steinbeck published his last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent. The plot revolves around the protagonist, Ethan Allen Hawley, who falls into the temptation to compromise his moral standards around honesty and integrity for material gain and the chance to recapture higher status and societal standing that had been lost by his father's misadventures. The novel is a dark inquiry into a person's soul and the nature of happiness.
With the redbud and grape hyacinth now in full glory, it's a good moment to reflect on the winter just passed, before it's buried by the bustle of spring and the projects ahead. While my winter also had its moments of turmoil and uncertainty, I've arrived at a much different place than Hawley and that seems worthy of reporting.
Saturday I moved back to Sandhill after spending the last three months with Ma'ikwe at Moon Lodge, her residence at Dancing Rabbit. It was the longest stretch of concentrated time we've spent together in our 6+ years of partnership and it brought up some surprising joys and challenges.
While there was one point deep into winter where Ma'ikwe thought it might be a good thing that we weren't together so much (something about absence making the heart grow fonder and missing the occasion for such fondness), it got better. Irritations that were more tolerable in smaller doses became issues we needed to attend to. Ways in which we've been hiding from each other (in plain sight) became exposed. As Ma'ikwe and I practice it, intimacy is a push-me-pull-me paradox where we subtly reject and stubbornly undermine the very closeness and transparency we crave. It's humbling stuff as we peel away the layers of armor and self-righteousness, only to discover more layers beneath.
While we were able to make progress on some of our intimacy issues—such as my baseline criticality [see my blog of Jan 9, Critical Judgment, for more on this]—other interesting lines of inquiry have been put on hold as Ma'ikwe's declining health warranted the top spot in our consciousness.
It had been my plan from the outset to return to Sandhill at this time. (Regardless of how the winter experiment in cohabitation went, I wanted to protect time to digest the experience before reaching any conclusions about where I'd live on a regular basis.) On the one hand, this is a crazy time to step back from being close to my wife, as she's facing a major challenge with chronic Lyme [see my previous blog We Went to the Doctor and the Doctor Said… for more on that].
On the other hand, my home community also needs me and my connection there is precious. In the three days I've been home I've organized a highway trash pick-up along a three-mile stretch of blacktop nearest our property; helped move the FIC office back into our funky trailer now that winter is a memory, started work on the community's taxes, hand scrubbed the kitchen floor, and done a cooking shift.
The last few days have been intimately disorienting, with the familiarity and comfort of being in my own bed—one I made by hand 38 years ago—juxtaposed with the absence of Ma'ikwe lying next to me, and the morning rhythms of the last three months transposed from winter at Moon Lodge to spring at the White House (the Sandhill building where my bedroom occupies the southeast corner). While both morning rituals prominently feature coffee and noodling at the keyboard of my laptop, now there is no fire to tend, no quilted window coverings to roll up, no choreography with my partner about how the day will go.
Luckily, when I'm home I'm still only three miles away from Ma'ikwe and I aim to get over there 2-3 times each week. While I won't be in her daily routine any more—and that's a significant difference—I will have approximately the same amount of concentrated personal time with her, and that's significant also.
For the immediate future, the hardest part will be the trips that we won't be taking together while she focuses on healing. Traveling and working together has been a significant part of our relationship, and that aspect will be minimized in the coming months. For example, we had been planning all winter to take a three-week trip to North Carolina the latter part of April—which included time to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary, April 21. Now I'll be taking that trip by myself. While I'll still enjoy the work and the friends I'll see in the process, a number of things will be less favorable:
o I'll be separated from my wife instead of with her.
o I won't have her as my partner in doing the work.
o I won't be with her to help with daily domestic needs (cooking, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, emptying the compost, etc.).
o I won't be by her side for emotional and moral support when she has hard days (skype and phone calls count, yet aren't the same thing as being able to hold her and breathe the same air).
As uncertain as the future is regarding Ma'ikwe's health, or even how much time we'll have together in the months immediately in front of us, we will be making decisions about that as a partnership that has never been closer or more resilient. Holding that framework in mind, I leave the winter content, and there is no amount of status or wealth that would tempt me to trade places with Ethan Allen Hawley.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
We Went to the Doctor and the Doctor Said…
… Nothing about feeding my wife shortening bread.
Ma'ikwe traveled to the Chicago suburbs this past week for a Wed morning initial visit with a Lyme literate doctor (whom I'll call Doctor Annette). "Lyme literate" is an appellation used by doctors who have made it an emphasis of their practice to study this particular syndrome and to work with patients who suffer from complications associated with having been infected by the bacterial spirochetes that carry the disease. As it turns out, it's complicated—not to mention controversial.
Size Matters
Before taking you on a tour of the Lyme Disease House of Horrors, I want to offer a basic primer on the following pantheon of human health hazards:
o Viruses are the smallest players. They don't have cells and are incapable of reproducing without a host. They are common and widespread. By far the most prevalent is the common cold. Other examples include flu, herpes, chicken pox, mumps, and shingles. While most viral infections are self limiting (such as a cold), others are not (such as AIDS). Viruses are often treated with vaccines, and cannot be treated with antibiotics.
o Bacteria are one to two orders of magnitude larger and can reproduce on their own (through asexual fission). Though larger than viruses, bacteria still lack a nucleus. They are styled prokaryotes, and exist as single-cell organisms. Antibiotics are typically used to kill bacteria by disrupting the integrity of the cell walls. Examples of bacterial infection include E coli, salmonella, staphylococcus, meningitis, and gonorrhea.
o Parasites are larger still and have a true nucleus. Though they are mostly multi-celled, they exist as single-cell organisms as well. Parasites are styled eukaryotes, and derive nutrients from a living host. Examples of parasite-caused human illnesses include amoebic dysentery, malaria, scabies, and pinworms. Treatment tends to focus on killing eggs, killing hatched parasites, and regenerating damaged tissue. Antibiotics are not affective approach with eukaryotes because what kills them will also attack healthy tissue.
o Fungi are also large. They are plant-like multi-celled living things that operate without chlorophyll. If they take nutrients from a living host then they are considered parasitic. However, fungi also exist as symbionts (where there presence is mutually beneficial with a living host) and as saprobes (where they derive nutrients from the decaying matter of a dead host). Examples of parasitic fungi that infect humans include athlete's foot, ringworm, and thrush. Treatments include antiseptics and fungicides.
—Spirochete Phase
This is the active bacterial version that all doctors recognize as a health hazard. People typically get infected as the result of back wash from a tick bite. While the classic symptoms include a bullseye rash around the bite, achy joints, fatigue, and headaches, an infected person may not experience any of these. There are definitive tests for the presence of spirochetes in the blood, and the standard treatment is an antibiotic to kill the spirochetes. (In Ma'ikwe's case she took a strong course of doxycycline 18 months ago when she first tested positive for spirochetes.) In addition, the spirochetes would normally be attacked by a person's immune system and are also adversely affected by heat (one of the more interesting treatment protocols is regular use of an infrared sauna, that apparently drives the little boogers crazy).
—Cyst Phase
As a defense strategy, the spirochetes can go dormant by encysting in response to attack. They can apparently stay dormant for years. Ma'ikwe suspects, for example, that her original infection happened in 1997, when she was diagnosed with and treated for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. In this phase there is currently no known test to discover their presence. Doctor Annette explained it using the metaphor of your body as a house. If the spirochetes live in the halls and the cysts in the rooms, a blood test will only tell you if there is anything in the halls.
The understanding is that the disease will move out of the cyst phase and back into the spirochete phase opportunistically in response to stress, or any time when you immune system has been compromised. This could include emotional distress, physical trauma, attack by another disease, etc.
While Ma'ikwe wasn't oriented toward looking at Lyme as part of her health record until she got a positive blood test for it in 2010, when she looks backwards, she now thinks that the disease reappeared in 2005, when she gave birth to her daughter, Ananda, and had a difficult labor. She never regained the same level of wellness that she enjoyed prior to her daughter's birth, and the diagnosis of chronic Lyme explains a lot of things.
In an effort to attack the cyst phase, Ma'ikwe takes regular doses of an anti-candida medicine that includes grapefruit seed extract, oregano oil, and acidophilus (yogurt culture, a probiotic).
—Cell-wall Deficient Phase
In addition to the first two phases, there is another, more exotic phase where the disease is active yet markedly different than in the spirochete form. While bacteria normally have cell walls, these ingenious boogers have apparently figured out how to survive for a time without a cell wall, thereby negating the effectiveness of antibiotics trying to hunt them down.
I know this sounds like something from the fringe science of the '60s television program Outer Limits, but evidence for this bizarre possibility was first discovered by scientists in 1935 when they found that some organisms that normally have cell walls could replicate without cell walls and then have the progeny revert to the original morphology (that is, with cell walls). Weird, eh?
While this three-phase defense strategy is impressive all by itself, the spirochetes have gone beyond that to develop additional techniques to bolster their survival. For one thing, they can clump in a ball. While the outer layer is susceptible to antibiotics, the inner layer is protected. Thus, a normal antibiotic course may not kill off all the spirochetes unless it's sustained long enough.
In addition, the bacteria are also capable of exuding a bio-film, a gelatinous goo that the bacteria can hide in, protecting it from being reached by antibiotics. What's more these last two strategies can be combined, with the goo being employed to protect a ball of spirochetes. There is speculation that the bacteria's favored approach to goo-generating is to rob the body of the myelin sheath around healthy nerves—thus employing a wolf in sheep's clothing trick that our leukocytes then bypass when on the prowl for bad guys. (It hardly seems fair that bacteria can be so clever!)
The counter-terrorist measure that Ma'ikwe is relying on is an enzyme approach (lumbrokinase) based on the earthworm, Lumbricus rubellus. Ma'ikwe takes these in pill form (Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll eat some worms... ). It breaks down the goo, which not only makes the little darlings more vulnerable to antibiotics, but it thins the blood, helping to improve blood flow—thereby addressing one of the classic Lyme symptoms of fog brain, perhaps resulting from insufficient oxygen flow to the head associated with goo-thickened blood.
OK, so that's a 25-cent tour of Lyme disease. Unfortunately, it's worse than that. Ma'ikwe must also cope with the likelihood of co-infection.
Once your immune system is besieged by Lyme, it creates a more favorable environment for additional diseases to join the party. Doctor Annette referred to this as "the soup." Given that this all started with a tick bite, the first group of co-infections to consider are tick-borne relatives of Lyme. There are three major ones that are the most common:
—Bartonella, which is a bacterium
—Babesiosis, which is a parasite
—Erlichiosis, which is a parasite
While all have symptoms that are similar to Lyme, they also have differences. Doctor Annette's strategy here is to keep our eyes open for the symptoms, but not to start with parasites (we'll get to those later). Her preference is to focus first on bacteria or viral infection, and she was willing to wait on Bartonella because the doxycycline that Ma'ikwe is currently taking for her re-emerged Lyme symptoms is equally effective for Bartonella.
Thus, Ma'ikwe got blood work done Wed (the results of which aren't back yet) to look for the most likely opportunistic problems beyond the tick-borne options. This represents casting a significantly wider net with which to strain the soup (no doubt straining the metaphor at the same time). Here are the four we're looking at:
o Epstein-Barr (herpes IV), which is a virus
o Herpes VI, which is also a virus
o Chlamydia, which is a bacteria
o Candida pneumonia, which is fungal
Doctor Annette's thinking is to deal with whatever is presenting, and that it's better to have a rather wide screen when looking for what's floating in the soup. Because it makes a large difference if you're treating a virus, a bacterium, or a fungus, it's better to have clear evidence of what's in the ascendant before investing a lot in medicine. That approach certainly made sense to us.
The overall strategy is to tackle whatever is being the most problematic, gradually promoting health through eliminating (or at least knocking back) whatever is being ornery. To do that, Doctor Annette has made a convincing case for looking at her health as a system that can be compromised in a variety of interactive ways. we need to be looking at the whole and not just for spirochetes. In the end, it doesn't really matter how much of Ma'ikwe's poor health is being directly caused by Lyme; it matters that she feels like crap and we need her to get better.
Are we having fun yet?
On top of everything else, I want to illuminate one last piece of the puzzle: herxing. This term refers to the pain and discomfort—often acute—associated with a massive die-off of bad guys in response to treatment. The conundrum here is accurately distinguishing between ill feelings that are the result of effective treatment (hurray!) or because you haven't gotten anywhere (boo!). In both cases you feel shitty.
Couldn't we just have a halo that appears over her head when things are getting better?
Thursday, March 15, 2012
About Face
I'm on my way to New Hampshire, chugging north from Maryland on the Vermonter (train #56 if you're scoring at home). This train is part of Amtrak's northeast regional fleet that has recently been upgraded to onboard satellite wi-fi. That means I'll have connectivity all day. Woohoo! (Among other things, that means I'll be able to track all the opening day action of March madness, as 16 first round basketball games will be contested today—it'll be a blizzard of hoops frenzy.)
I finished my reports from last weekend's facilitation training at Liberty Village about 1 am this morning, clearing my In Box before arriving today in Peterborough, where I'll be immersed in weekend consulting with Nubanusit, a relatively new cohousing community that's asked me to do some focused work with their facilitation team. Chugging north through Philly, New York, and Springfield today, I'll observe the novelty of a vernal reversal, as blossoms regress to swollen buds, followed by buds shriveling back into dormancy. It's springtime in the northeast!
Ma'ikwe is going through health struggles right now as she suffers through a recurring bout with Lyme disease. While the main symptoms have been been achy joints (her arms and legs have been in pain nearly constantly the past month) and low energy, there is concern that she may have sustained heart damage (a relatively common occurrence with chronic Lyme patients) and she's wearing a monitor for 30 days to collect data about the electrical signals to her heart when she suffers an episode of dizziness or tachycardia. In recent days her pain and nausea have increased to the point where she was unable to accompany me on my current East Coast business trip [see my March 8 entry, Wife Down, for more on that].
Yesterday she was scheduled to have an echocardiogram done, as part of the testing sequence recommended by the heart specialist she's working with. Naturally, I'm concerned about her health—all the more so as she's struggling and not yet getting better—and we had talked briefly in the morning, via Skype. I caught her just as she was getting up (she had opened her laptop before making her first cup of tea) and we didn't talk long, but I could tell she'd not had a good night and I was worried about her.
Working on reports throughout the day, I had been regularly monitoring email to see if there was word from Ma'ikwe about how the testing had gone. Though nothing had come in by 4 pm (at which point I left my laptop to help my host prepare a dish for the community meal), I wasn't that concerned. There are many things that can delay communication and it's common for Ma'ikwe to be exhausted by a trip to town and need to simply rest afterwards. I figured I'd hear in due course and wasn't dwelling on it when I went to dinner.
Imagine my surprise then when I accidentally learned about Ma'ikwe's echocardiogram from someone who happened to be sitting at the same table with me. I had casually been explaining to Betsy, sitting next to me, that my partner had intended to come to Liberty Village as well, but had to cancel at the last minute due to ill health. Overhearing that, Vince (sitting at the end of the table) chimed in with news about how much Ma'ikwe had enjoyed her test today.
At first I thought I had misheard (how could Vince, who had only met her twice, possibly know more about what was happening with her than I did?). But then Facebook occurred to me. My wife participates in that alternate reality and I don't. [See my entry, Massaging the Medium, for more about that.] It only took me about 10 seconds to imagine what must have happened. Ma'ikwe had posted something about her experience on Facebook shortly after getting home and Vince had picked it up.
Simultaneous with my confusion (how could he know that?) I was eager for the news. The posting was brief, and I got to see it on Vince's smart phone:
OK, I know I'm not supposed to be enjoying this, but I have to say getting an echocardiagram done is one of the most frickin' cool things I've done in a while.
Reading between the lines, Ma'ikwe's upbeat tone meant that the news couldn't have been bad. Whew. So far, so good. Reflecting further though, she didn't actually say anything about the test results. Maybe they hadn't been interpreted yet (racking my brains, it seemed to me that the heart specialist only visits our county on Thursdays and the test had been done on Wednesday).
After savoring the news that she was in good spirits, I started to have a reaction to my getting a health update about my wife from a casual dinner companion. But then I paused. Maybe there was an email waiting for me that I hadn't seen yet. At that point it had been perhaps three hours since I'd last checked email, so I hit the pause button on the storm brewing in my stomach. In fact, I started chiding myself for being so reactive. It's a good thing that Ma'ikwe is willing to share her story and there was no reason to think I had been left out. Relax, I told myself.
Then I went back to my room.
When I checked email, there was no message from Ma'ikwe. Ufda. Rather than pout, I tried reaching her via Skype. No answer. Hmm.
I figure the phenomenon I was going through is the observe of the German term, freudenschade, which means pleasure derived from other people's misery. In my case, it was latent misery that emerged in the context of receiving good news. What did it mean that my wife had energy to share information about her echocardiogram with 900 of her "closest friends" on Facebook but didn't have the energy to tell her husband about it? I wasn't doing well with this line of thinking.
This morning, however, I'm doing better. I wrote Ma'ikwe about my confusion and frustration as the last thing before going to bed and there was a good response waiting for me when I boarded the train at BWI Airport. She'd been up at 4:40 am (not good) and we've started a dialog about how she protects herself from letting people in too close (even me) and about how it's far easier to jot off a breezy one-sentence Facebook post than it is to unpack the complex anxieties and despair that she must navigate as she attempts to face her health challenges.
Ma'ikwe is a brave woman, and I'm am both amazed and profoundly appreciative of her willingness to tackle the hard questions whenever one of us raises them. The last thing she needs to attend to right now is her husband's bruised ego.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Wife Down
Two days ago, Ma'ikwe and I started out for Quincy IL at 4:30 am to catch the early train to Chicago. It was to be the first leg of our journey to Maryland, to attend the eighth and final weekend of our two-year facilitation training course in the Mid-Atlantic States. On the drive she got nauseous. Though we cracked a window and slowed down on the curves, it didn't get better. Ten miles out, she asked to pull over, so she could get out and puke. Not good.
Back in August 2010 Ma'ikwe got diagnosed with Lyme disease. She underwent a strong antibiotic course at the time (six weeks of doxycycline) and got relief from the symptoms. Though she got demonstrably better right away, her strength and stamina never returned to pre-2009 levels. Over this winter the symptoms gradually reappeared, with the pace accelerating in the last couple weeks.
Ma'ikwe traces her illness to a bout with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (which is tick-borne, just as Lyme is) that occurred 15 years ago. While that wasn't her orientation to her illness in 1997, today she thinks that Lyme disease (essentially a spirochete infection with rather sophisticated defense mechanisms) entered her system at that time and has been there ever since, mostly dormant with occasional flare ups—which have lately been more frequent and more severe. Yuck.
Thus, Ma'ikwe believes she's wrestling with chronic Lyme disease, which is a demon that's the very devil to permanently cast out from the body. As if her symptoms are not bad enough—constant achy joints, especially in the arms and legs; low energy; tachycardia; shortness of breath; low libido—there is controversy among allopathic physicians as to whether chronic Lyme actually exists, significantly complicating the search for a doctor to advise on an appropriate healing regimen.
(Insurance companies love this by the way, as they can use the party line of the Center for Disease Control—that chronic Lyme doesn't exist—to deny reimbursement for treatment. This administrative wrangling is a bitter impediment for the growing group of victims who identify as sufferers of chronic Lyme and are desperately looking for help.)
It has been a godsend for my wife that there is an online support group for chronic Lyme. Whenever some new set of painful symptoms crops up, she can post it to the group and she'll get 10 replies in 15 minutes, where responders are reporting similar experiences and describing what they've done to cope with that presentation. Notable, she gets this near-instant support independently of the time of day she posts her anguish. It has been an incalculable morale boost for Ma'ikwe to know that she's not alone and that she's believed.
My end of this is support. While I have no personal experience with Lyme, and don't know on a body level what she's going through, I believe whatever she tells me and am just trying to hang in there with her as she rides this out. My support is physical (doing some of the recurring chores that have become much less manageable); emotional (listening to her describe what's going on in her body, and helping her remember how current reports match up with what she told me last year, last month, or last week); and financial (both because she can't work as much and because her health care expenses are increasing).
In two weeks, Ma'ikwe and I will travel to see a Lyme-literate doctor for the first time. The appointment coincides with the end of my current business trip, and I'll be able to be with her for the three-hour initial visit, helping to make sure that Ma'ikwe asks all of her questions—and then helping her remember later what the doctor said. I am so thankful that we'll get to go through this together.
As soon as Ma'ikwe puked in the pre-dawn light Tuesday morning, we both knew that there was a serious question to face: did it really make sense for her to push herself to get on the train? We had about 15 minutes to decide. Would her queasiness in the moving car not persist on a moving train? Did her strong desire to be with our class on graduation weekend trump the balking of her body? In contemplating her choice, she went through the anguish of wondering if she'd ever go on trips again (if she gave in to the illness now was it just an inexorable slide into being housebound—it was a grim few minutes)?
Holding her, I asked her to listen to her intuition. I'd done solo training weekends before (14 of them in fact) and would be fine if she backed out. While the trainings are better with her, that's really only true if she's strong enough to participate. As we pulled into the station parking lot and popped the trunk to remove the luggage, Ma'ikwe decided to not go. Suddenly, I was on the train sitting next to an empty seat. While that's not an unusual experience in and of itself, it was a weird one when I expected Ma'ikwe beside me. Instead, I was a little bit beside myself.
As I type this in Maryland, Ma'ikwe is safely back home on her couch, coping in more familiar territory, with myriad friends and loved ones close at hand. She will not have to churn this weekend over when to take a break and when to attend sessions; she can just focus on her health. Looking back at Tuesday morning, she knows that she made the right choice. Just like I did in asking her to be my partner.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Not for the Faint of Heart
Last Saturday night my wife Ma'ikwe was in the bathroom with me just before going to sleep. Without warning, she sat down suddenly on the edge of the bathtub and keeled over. I caught her head before it hit the floor and pulled her upright. Her eyes were wide open & unseeing; her pupils fully dilated. She was semi-rigid, though not convulsing like an epileptic. She was pale as a ghost. While I was on full alert and hyper aware, I didn't panic because I could tell she was breathing… barely.
It freaked me right out. Fortunately, the color returned to her face within about 10 seconds, and in less than a minute she was responsive (if woozy). Once I got her into bed she had the shakes. Half an hour later she threw up. It was not the most relaxed night we'd ever spent together.
Ma'ikwe had passed out once before, almost a year ago at a spa in northern New Mexico. [See my blog of Dec 14, 2009, Adventures in Hydrotherapy]. That time I wasn't next to her when it happened, and it was easier to understand then how fainting might be precipitated by her having just emerged from soaking in hot water on a cool evening. Last Saturday it was far more mysterious.
She'd had a couple glasses of wine with dinner, but had finished drinking three hours before passing out. Sometimes people will get light-headed right after getting up from a horizontal position, but she'd been standing without incident for a few minutes before the room started spinning. Sometimes fainting is related to low blood sugar, but she'd eaten a good dinner. Sometimes dizziness is associated with stress, yet the day had gone well, and we'd had an evening with friends that was full of laughter. What the hell happened?
Yesterday, it started to happen again. While Ma'ikwe was sitting in an Amtrak waiting room in Chicago's Union Station—just reading a book—she began to feel faint. I was not with her at the time and was dismayed to hear the story when I returned. Fortunately, she did not pass out this time, but who knows when she might again? She's not felt 100% since blacking out three days previously, and we're both worried. Both times it seemed to come upon her with little provocation, in the most innocuous circumstances—where she hadn't been doing anything unusual and had recently eaten. It's very scary.
As a precaution, we rented a cart and took it slow while boarding our last train home. Fortunately, there were no more incidents between Chicago and her bed back at Dancing Rabbit.
One possibility is that there was some residual damage from her recent bout with Lyme disease. While blood tests last month indicated that the culprit spirochete is in remission, the disease affects people differently and sometimes a person's immune system is compromised permanently—especially when the disease has had months to muck around inside you, as was the case with Ma'ikwe.
All of that said, we really don't know what's going on. While further testing may turn something up, it may not. We may need to sort through how much it makes sense to continue to travel and work together, and even whether it's safe for Ma'ikwe to drive, by feeling our way in the dark of an uncertain future.
The good news is that Ma'ikwe has a strong heart—both physically and psychically. The bad news is that her constitution may not be able to match her heart. My wife's attitude is excellent; we just need her health to be as well.
Monday, August 30, 2010
The Lyme & the Coconut
Good News! Ma'ikwe has Lyme disease.
While I realize that most people wouldn't consider that a cause for joy, she's been trying to diagnose why she's been so tired and achy for months [see my blog of Dec 14, 2009, Adventures in Hydrotherapy], and the not knowing has been brutal. She did a battery of tests back in December—including one for Lyme disease—but it came back negative then, leaving us baffled about the diagnosis and therefore unsure about the treatment. Rest has been helping but she just hasn't been getting better.
At the urging of friends who are health practitioners, she did a Western Blot test this time, and this more definitive assessment came back positive. While the treatment probably means an extended course in antibiotics (goodbye intestinal flora), Ma'ikwe is more than ready to do what it takes to put an end to her year of debilitating symptoms.
While the muscle ache and lethargy have been bad enough, the hardest part has been on her coconut (that is, her head). It is hard to maintain a positive attitude when you don't know what you have, whether you've hit the bottom, or even if you'll get better. While she's done a heroic job of maintaining an emotional even keel throughout this ordeal, it's much better knowing what you've got and what it will take to recover.
According to my sister-in-law Kim (Ma'ikwe was part of a Ludwig family peregrination to southwestern Michigan over the weekend to help celebrate her niece's christening), Ma'ikwe was feeling buoyant enough yesterday to indulge in some rolling around on the dance floor with her brother Mark, to the tune of Rock Lobster (by the B-52s). While I'm not sure what this says about her emotional stability, it's apparent that she's feeling more frisky and I take that as generally a good sign.
While with family, her plan was to take advantage of Uncle Ted being among the celebrants to discuss antibiotics. He's an MD with a healthy skepticism about the advisability of their liberal application, and she values his medical opinion. I know she's anxious to get started on the treatment so that she can immediately arrest whatever ongoing mischief the Lyme disease is visiting upon her body.
In a year, perhaps we'll all recall August 2010 as a joyous time, replete with alliterative milestones: Kim & Mark's daughter's dedication, the definitive diagnosis of a debilitating disease, and dance floor derring-do. While Ma'ikwe's been doing a yeoman job of giving her body a lot of rest the past nine months, I'm hoping that with this diagnosis she'll now be able to give her coconut a rest also.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Catching the Ferry
Ma’ikwe and I are on Drummond Island, which is as far east as you can go in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and not get out of your car. We’re tucked just under Sault Saint Marie and, as Sarah Palin would have already told you if she weren’t busy going rogue, you can see Ontario from our front porch.
This is a recuperative and nostalgic vacation for Ma’ikwe. When she developed the symptoms of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue last November & December [see my blog of Dec 14, 2009, Adventures in Hydrotherapy, for more on this], she decided, wisely, to scale down the 2010 construction season on her new house. Instead of working right through the summer, she scheduled a break in late June, with the option of a second session in late summer if the building’s needs and her available energy were adequately aligned.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Adventures in Hydrotherapy
It is my first morning at Ojo Caliente, where Ma'ikwe and I will be for three days of combined birthday present to each other. Already we've had an adventure.
Setting the Stage
Ojo is a mineral hot springs in the high desert of New Mexico, about an hour north, northwest of Santa Fe, nestled between the Chama and Rio Grande Rivers. First identified as a healing place by Native Americans centuries ago, the site was developed as a recuperative spa (a Latin acronym, by the way, from Salus Per Aquas, or health through water) by Antonio Joseph in 1868, and has been continuously operated as a privately owned business ever since.
Ojo Caliente (which translates to warm eye in Spanish—don't you just love that image for a geothermal spring?) is unique in that there are four separate hot springs that emerge at this one location, featuring iron, arsenic, lithium, and soda—affording guests a semi-bewildering array of options for how to treat what ails you. The pools come in different temperatures as well as flavors, and options are augmented by a sauna, a regular swimming pool, and a rich menu of therapeutic wraps, mud treatments, and massages.
The Afternoon Surprise
Ma'ikwe and I checked in yesterday afternoon. After settling into our room, we strolled down to the wine bar and enjoyed an excellent glass of '06 merlot. Then we donned our swimming attire and robes and headed for the waters. Our first choice was the arsenic pool, which is the hottest at 105 degrees. In the 40-degree outdoor ambient temperature, we could soak (at various degrees of immersion) for about 10 minutes at a time before becoming sufficiently parboiled that a break was in order.
After a few rounds of that I was interested in a dip in the iron pool, followed by a sauna (having been here once before, two years ago, I had a definite idea about how best to build up a state of euphoria as well as an appetite for dinner in the excellent Artesian Restaurant on the premises). As Ma'ikwe wanted to linger in the luxuriation of the hottest waters, we separated.
Imagine my surprise about 10 minutes later when the attendant in the sauna area asked if my wife were at the arsenic pool. Casually admitting that that was so, she went on to inform me that my wife had just passed out. Oops. Now we were off script.
By the time I got there, Ma'ikwe was lying on the concrete next to the pool, swaddled in towels and surrounded by concerned staff. She was a little weak, yet fully conscious and I figured whatever happened couldn't be too bad because she was serving up her typical witty comebacks whenever anyone asked how she was doing.
According to Ma'ikwe, and corroborated by a couple of other women who were near her at the same time, she stood up to leave the pool and felt dizzy. She immediately sat down on the side of the pool. When the dizziness persisted she started to lower her heads between her knees, and passed out before she got there. The next thing she remembered was lying on the concrete next to the pool, looking up. The two women, who attended to her right away and got staff assistance, reported that she was out for about five seconds. On the way down she scraped her face, hand, and knee, but all of that was superficial and there was no concussion.
The protocol in this situation (which makes perfect sense to me if I put myself in the shoes of spa operators) is to call the local EMT, to make sure that the fainting didn't presage anything more serious. The husband and wife team (Craig & Catherine) showed up minutes later and efficiently and respectfully went through the routine checking of blood pressure, pulse, and oxygen and blood sugar levels in the blood. This was followed by a basic scan of body parts and reflexes, and asking the obligatory questions about what day it was and who was president.
As Ma'ikwe had good responses for all these tests, everyone relaxed. Though the emergency response protocol requires EMTs to recommend that someone be checked out at a hospital whenever fainting occurs (for a deeper look at potential underlying problems), we politely declined and signed a release, which Craig & Catherine took in stride. As it happens, Ma'ikwe travels with arnica (in pills and cream no less) and everyone agreed that taking that right away was a good idea (even though Craig & Catherine could only advise that "off the record," lest they run afoul of their allopathic accreditation).
B-ware
While the excitement of the afternoon led to a more subdued evening (entirely appropriate for Ma'ikwe's health, yet not exactly what we had lined up for our couples retreat), it left us pondering why exactly she'd fainted. Understandably, Ma'ikwe was frustrated that her body wasn't performing up to snuff.
Ma'ikwe has been struggling with overall symptoms of weakness and achiness for several weeks, and has been suspecting that she may have some form of fibromyalgia. This possibility had been confirmed by a trusted health practitioner (Carla) that Ma'ikwe saw on Friday—who has the triple threat credentials of DOM (Doctor of Oriental Medicine), ND (Naturopathic Doctor), and RN (Registered Nurse). While the diagnosis was based solely on symptoms and is not conclusive, Ma'ikwe is trying it on, and extra rest is strongly advised.
In addition, Ma'ikwe is trying to treat herself in a variety of ways including the ingestion of vitamin supplements, one of which is a B-complex. Because she's shown a sensitivity to taking B-vitamins in the past (they were recommended during her pregnancies—13 and five years ago—yet she invariably felt nauseous and threw up whenever she attempted them in pill form), Carla recommended trying B's in liquid form, where it's easier to fine tune the dosage. While Carla would ordinarily recommend 10 drops daily for someone in Ma'ikwe's situation, she suggested starting cautiously and gradually increasing the dosage if everything went well.
Friday and Saturday, Ma'ikwe put her toe into the B-complex waters with two-three drops of the liquid supplement. As she had no adverse reaction, yesterday she took six.
Taken all together, three days at a spa sounded just right, and we thoroughly enjoyed the two-hour drive north from Albuquerque on a sunny Sunday afternoon. So what went wrong? Here's what we've puzzled out:
—Ma'ikwe is suffering from a general sense of weakness and achiness (possibly fibromyalgia).
—We increased our altitude by a 1000 feet (to 6200).
—While it doesn't happen often, she has a health history of occasionally fainting.
—She'd just doubled the dosage of a supplement known to make her nauseous.
—She'd had a glass of wine (and no water) right before entering the pool.
—Hot tubs (which the arsenic pool essentially is) dehydrate users.
Pieced together this way, it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that jumping into hot water was, well, like jumping into hot water. No wonder she fainted.
I can hardly wait to see how relaxing today will be.
