• Learning to Fly

    12. Day Twenty-seven The observant among you might notice that the numbering of these posts has changed. This is because I changed them. All of them. Day One is the day I started writing about my illness in order to externalise it, as part of the healing process (along with all the pills, dietary changes…

  • Walls Come Tumbling Down

    11. Day Twenty-one I didn’t write the blog yesterday because I was just too busy having a life. The 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall was something to behold, Berlin style. Big pompous show at Brandenburg Gate with Thomas Gottschalk and a spectacular domino event plus fireworks, while the more hands-on activist types…

  • Loud as a Whisper

    10. Day Eighteen You may have been surprised when I admitted to being a Michael Jackson fan, but I have another confession to make. I am a Trekkie. And after many years of being totally purist and insisting on only watching the orginal series, I have discovered The Next Generation and I like it. I…

  • Heal the World

    9. Day Sixteen Hey, I feel great. Almost no pain at all. Two whole days already. Probably because I stopped taking the Colestyramin. Or because I took it. Is it a good sign or a bad sign that there’s no pain? Was I having Herxheimer reactions (sign of bacterial die-off) and now I’m not? Well,…

  • This is it

    8. Day Twelve People look at me askance when I say how much I love Michael Jackson’s music. Except my husband who feels exactly the same. And now my son is in love with him too. He probably would never have bothered to listen to him had he not upped and died. We went to…

  • Infection

    7. Day Eleven Infection creates inflammation; inflammation is war: dangerous enemy pathogens invade the body and encounter a defence system that attack and fight them. War in the body. If the body conquers the pathogens then the infection is over. If the pathogens conquer the body, then you die. That is the analogy that Dethlefsen…

  • The Disease Path

    6. Day Nine There seems to be a major improvement in the neck. I’ll just ignore the fact that two new regions of pain – my hip and my coccyx – have taken over instead because I’m so glad to be able to move my head without being in agony. Small price to pay. So…

  • Clammy Lydia

    5. Day Seven It slipped my mind to tell you about the results of my blood test on Day Three, didn’t it? I probably needed time to digest it myself. Actually, I can hardly believe I walked out of there without getting them to make a copy that I could take home with me and…

  • 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…

  • A Pain in the Neck

    3. Day Four This is not like your run of the mill diary. I’m not going to just write down what I did today. That would be worse than Twitter. This is a therapeutic diary. Xanthe hanging out her bacterially dirtied emotional washing. Not even Ariel can get it clean – we need some really…