Good Vibrations
post viral mayhem, little darlings, and spring break
Stress is largely not an event itself, but rather an individual’s response to a stimulus. For example, one person might find the noise of children playing to be stressful, while for another, the same sounds bring joy and happy memories.
Controlling stress response: - by Mardi Crane-Godreau, PhD
I found Dr. Mardi’s latest article to be very timely. I’m still in a stomach bug post-viral phase of recovery that has had my nerves flaring up and frazzling a bit which has had me wishing that all of the little darlings who live in my neighborhood, and who are on spring break, had gone to the beach with the rest of the little darlings who live around here because this just wasn’t the best time for them to have parked on my lawn.
Last Monday eve right after me and the hubs had just settled into a comfortable evening with a streaming episode of Doc Martin, a steady sea of blue lights began to flow down our street. Imagine our surprise to see them pulling through our circular driveway. We are pretty boring people and had not called 911 ourselves, so you can probably imagine the shock of seeing what appeared to be something like a Honda civic parked on our back lawn and one of our local law enforcement officers, with his gun drawn, ordering the driver of the vehicle and onto the ground. My husband did his part by reminding me to stay away from the windows.
Apparently, the little speed demon thought it would be a good idea to evade a speeding ticket and ended up in a high-speed chase (with police) in which he was at one point in time clocked going 138 mph. Why the chase ended up in my back yard is still a bit of a mystery, and all I know is that one of the driver’s passengers is living on our street. The whole incident hasn’t exactly helped my heart palpitations, and there probably won’t be any happy memories associated with these spring break shenanigans.
However, I am looking into a new (to me) chronic Lyme associated whacked up stress response treatment option, for which I had a consultation, on this very same past Monday. During this consultation, I was given a resource for a charitable Lyme disease organization who can help with Lyme treatment discounts. However, the organization requires proof of Lyme disease through things like serological testing which means that those of us who missed the acute phase of Lyme disease testing window and now have a dysregulated immune system and the absence of thousands of dollars to do what’s now being sold as the best of the best in Lyme testing (ie Lyme disease that is now in the chronic phase) are out of luck (SOL) as far as being able to get a charitable discount on the Lyme treatment I’m seeking.
On what planet does it make sense to spend oodles and gobs of money (you don’t have) to prove you have something that someone else has already agreed to treat you for in order to get a discount on that service? Apparently, this makes sense to organizations with letters in them like I R and S who require things like this in order for charities to maintain their charitable statuses.
This brought back ridiculous memories of some long Covid recover studies/clinics that required positive COVID tests for admittance into their programs which meant that those of us who skipped the COVID testing because they were smart enough to know that if they were living in a home where others who were sick, and had tested positive for COVID, meant that if they had COVID I had COVID, and therefore I didn’t need to take a test to know I had COVID. Thank God for my medical background, past experience, and patient persistence through which I was able to help myself using the things I’ve shared with you here to recover from long COVID.
If you would like to help me with my new chronic Lyme stress reduction treatment plan, you can make a not-tax-deductible donation through my buy me a coffee page.
With that news out of the way, I would like to share some info about a frequency device I’ve been using for Vagus Nerve stimulation. This is related to the article I shared with you last time-
Vagus nerve stimulation may tame autoimmune diseases : Shots - Health News : NPR
What I really like about this particular device, is that it can be used for more that Vagus Nerve stimulation, there are discount codes available, and it’s a pretty low-cost device option compared to other devices I’ve seen.