Steamed Pudding

4. Day Five

Yesterday I tried out the sauna therapy. Well, to be exact, I went with a friend to a hamam in Kreuzberg where they also have a sauna. For those of you who are not “Lyme literate” (you are in good company with 99% of the universe), you can also detoxify through your skin. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that there is indeed a therapy that doesn’t involve further pain and discomfort, but is in fact relaxing and pleasant. And if you’re feeling flush, you can get massaged, soaped, peeled and waxed while you’re at it.

It was my friend’s birthday, so while she went to get soaped, peeled and waxed, I sat around trying to come to terms with the feeling of being steamed pudding. And after two goes in the sauna and a prolonged laze in the steam room, I have to admit that I felt less puddingy and generally rejuvenated. And get this – no pain. Even this morning getting up there was significantly less internal shrieking and screaming. I try to keep the noises to a minimum, by the way, so as not to disturb my family, but my husband did complain about the sighing recently.

So I made a big decision yesterday. I decided that this would be my favourite number one therapy and that I would invite all my friends to partake of it too, even though they’re not sick. The place was full of what looked like perfectly healthy women, so I guess it’s okay to do this therapy whatever you feel like. Come to think of it, I was told only Friday that I was looking good, so maybe you can’t always see when someone is sick. In any case, why should I be the only one having fun – you can all join in.

So let’s go back to near the beginning again. The year 2000 and I’m still pregnant, but I’m itching all over. I am going crazy with the itching. No resident insects to be found. My midwife recommends a herbal practitioner who bombards me with homeopathic globuli. I watch him tear his hair out one by one as he runs up against the wall of my unending itchiness. As I get more pregnant, the itching worsens, particularly at night, so I am no longer sleeping.

And I’m losing weight. Well, not exactly losing it, but not gaining any, which is a very strange state of affairs for a pregnant woman. My weight stays at around 70 kg for most of the pregnancy. At the end, just before I give birth, I weigh 1 kg less than I did at the beginning. We begin to wonder what is going on.

But I’m not worried. I am full up of that happy hormone that comes with being pregnant. Even though I can hardly walk because of the trapped nerve, I itch all over, can’t sleep and can hardly eat because of the reflux, I’m happy as Larry. Because I’m going to have a baby and that’s just so nice. I can feel him moving about in there and sometimes even see his cute little elbows and his knees. And as time goes on, he moves around rather a lot. In fact, added to the itching, it is impossible to sleep because he’s bouncing off the walls inside. Note: hyperactive children are already like that before they are born.

At some point, at about two months before the due date, my gynaecologist has a brilliant idea. Let’s do a test on the liver! And lo and behold there is sky-high bilirubin count causing the itching. I am beginning to go a lovely shade of ochre. And I have to go into hospital where they do one test after another for infectious diseases, but not – I repeat, not – for Lyme disease.

According to John Bleiweiss, M.D., Lyme hepatitis occurs in about 15-20% of cases. Sometimes it occurs in the early stages of infection and is resolved. In my case, there was a lot of medical shaking of heads that concluded with “well these things often happen during pregnancy”, and “it will go away after you’ve given birth”, which it did, but it came back less than a year later and made me very worried indeed. The happy hormone was gone by then.

For the full story on the month in hospital leading up to and giving birth, click here.