Resenting Lyme

Lyme is a roller coaster ride. If anyone tells you differently they are fooling themselves and you. It is a roller coaster ride of waxing and waning- not just in symptoms but in emotions as well. These yoyoing emotions also are not just for the one suffering from the disease, but for their caregivers too.

Though I know people who have had Lyme or who presently do, I was never right there in their daily life and struggles to experience any of this first hand. It's all especially hard if the individual with the disease also happens to be one that you rely upon- like a service animal.

I'm no stranger to chronic health difficulties- not for myself and not for my service dogs. That said, I have grown accustom to being able to rely upon Thane as a *healthier* service dog- to help me at home from retrieves, to door tugs, and  to nudging doors open or closed, to turning out the light, to helping me undress. I have become even more accustom to him in public though- his guide work impeccable, his boredom games something that has made me grow as a trainer and handler- but above all I never felt so resentful about anything, not even in Met's life. Don't get me wrong I  DO NOT resent Thane, it's the Lyme Borreliosis spirochetes that has my focus of resentment for all its taken from us.

I love Thane with all my heart. It hurts though deep in my soul that I can not snap my fingers and return him to health. Though Thane is doing better and needs his exercise and even outings, he is not the dependable perfection in guiding and decision-making I had come to expect. Now the mini guide has become a *must have* tool for not just street crossings where it has been invaluable, but to the entire trek we make from the time we leave our walkway to the time we enter our apartment on the return. This is sad to me. I feel almost lost in a maze by what the disease has done; has taken from us.

There are things that just impact our work. I want to have the memories in real life again and yet I have to wonder when, if ever, that will happen again.

When Thane is given drugs, Thane is different. I never noticed it when he was given antibiotics before so I did not expect it now. That said, his antibiotics are not the only new thing he is taking- he has been on milk thistle twice a day and had Denosyl added a couple of days ago.

Border Collies or at least my Border Collies have needed to keep to routine. If Met missed more than two or three days of walks or outings, it was as though I was working a green dog until he got settled into routine again. Thane has not been quite as bad as that, but still a week seems to be his top before I feel like I have a green dog at my side again. When you add drugs to the mix and up the ante from a week to nearly a month with a dog recovering from the implications of a severe drug reaction and a history of  weak blood brain barrier symptoms- my gosh!

Thane has always had a specific type of response to chemical drugs like Capstar. It's bizarre, but he is less clear headed and has this absolute necessity to follow the sidewalk or floor path edge. Its not just walking on the edge of the sidewalk or along a wall, but an actual weaving aong the sidewalk edge, trees, obstacles etc. I feel like I am doing weave poles when these reactions hit. When he needs Capstar, it's short lived and followed by two or three doses of milk thistle since weak blood brain barrier symptoms can merely be due to a slower drug clearance. The key here is that it is short lived because it is not needed every single day.

Right now I have no idea what the trigger really is for his reaction which appears magnified at least four times that of how he responds on Capstar. It could be the amoxicillin, it could be the milk thistle, it could be the Denosyl, or it could be non-med or supplement based and be tripett or liver clearance for everything due to his liver involvement that followed the use of Doxycycline, or an unrelated issue altogether that just becomes apparent when drugs or less tolerated supplements are in use, or a symptom of the disease itself  (hard to accept that latter possibility though).

It's understandable that I should be frustrated right now, but resentful- I can't get my head around this. That tick did not know it was sick It did not necessarily do this to us on purpose other than taking a blood meal is how it survives, but it happened nonetheless and I am left to work through what emotions I have from one day to the next.

Yesterday I was full of optimism, today I just want whoever left me with a faulty replica of Thane, to return the original- it's not funny any more!

Answers

There are times when we get answers that resolutions can be swift as a result. When I set my mind on testing Thane for Lyme disease, I thought I was doing it as a *preventative* measure for not leaving stones unturned that could cause problems in the health and longevity of a team, but I certainly was not of the belief that he had it.

At that point, I was being a good owner and handler providing my dog with the very best in prevention and health maintenance. It was not until later that I would remember the strange dark bump on Thane's abdomen that was later replaced with the hive like reaction common in most after a tick has detached.

I pursued testing because of the proactive stand my friend Sharon at the After Gadget blog has held. Through her fight with Lyme and other co-infections as well as Gadget's experience with Lyme, she has done an awesome job in showing us that Lyme is not just a North East/ East coast  thing, but that it can be wherever you live.

It was hard for me to digest when my vet said that Thane's newer symptoms were leading her to believe that TBD (tick borne disease) might actually be his problem, but she continued by saying that our ticks are not generally diseased.

Thane blew that out of the water when his tests came back with a diagnosis of Lyme disease. By the time the drugs were here (needed a compounder) Thane had begun to enter a collapse. I was unaware how bad off he was and as a result we barely made it back home. It was heart-breaking and scarey, but having a friend who knew what I was going through truly made all the difference in how I handled the next week with Thane.

One of the hardest things was to put Thane in his crate and head out with my guide cane and mini-guide to do my shopping errands alone. To say I got a real lesson in just how much Thane does would be a huge understatement. It was not easy, but someone had to get food in our house if we wanted to eat. grin

It's been hard for me to deal with other things too though- summers are when Thane and I head off for adventuring. Its a time of just really trying new things that make me trust in him completely. Its a time when our bond and teamwork are magnified because of the experiences we have together in parts unknown. This year however, between the ridiculous nature of the weather and Thane's health, the furthest we have gone is New Seasons and in doing that trip, we barely made it home.

Summers are my lifeline to surviving the nine to ten months of rain and mud and trials of trying to ride public transit amidst that kind of weather. I rely on the pick-me-up I get from our sun filled days of adventure to carry me through until the next summer surfaces. Now, this year, I'm supplementing with Vitamin D because as much sun as I get when taking Thane busy or for walks when he is able just aint going to cut my needs.

Despite all of this, I felt like I was doing OK. That is until Thane crashed again. Though its turned out alright now, the experience of him reacting to Doxycycline (and me suspecting the drug, but being told to continue its use) will haunt me for a while. Thankfully we saw a specialist the very next day who suspected the same, pulled the drug, and placed him on Amoxicillin instead. I am cautiously optimistic with the path of the past week on this drug.

During the crash Thane experienced, I received some hurtful emails amidst some really supportive ones. You know who you are- the people who carried me through. I can't thank you enough for helping me take a step back from those whose views were essentially that of blame instead of support. You carried me through some of the most tumultuous days I have experienced since the passing of Met. For that I am most grateful.

I know there will be ups and downs along the road back for Thane and I. I also know that Thane is not going to get better in a week or a month- afterall the spirochets have had two years to wreak havoc without being stopped. I am trying not to live with regrets. I can't go back and change that fateful day in June 2009 when I felt a weird bump on Thane and told myself to keep an eye on it. I'd personally never seen what an attached tick looked like on a body part even when I was sighted (though the vet found one on Met when I had him only two weeks, he removed it without me seeing it on him) so blaming myself for this isn't going to help me and it certainly won't help Thane.

On the positive side, I kept looking for answers to his ever changing symptoms from skin and coat, to symptoms that appeared hormonal, to musculoskeletal, to neurological. I am glad that I stuck with it and did not come to a place where I just blew it off because nothing ever panned out. Some people think my search for answers to be a desire to find something wrong. That could not be the furthest thing from the truth. By sticking with it, I found that Thane had his own journey to walk- a journey to teach me and others that Lyme is in fact here in the Pacific NorthWest.