Barons March 9th

I think I won’t talk about Megan in these anymore while she is on her mission because she updates you herself.

Tyler

Tyler is still working at Arctic Circle and starting to get more hours. He works for about three hours a day, three days a week. It’s not much but he’s hoping he will start getting more hours soon as he gets better at the job and if someone quits.

Kayla

Kayla sings all day, every day it seems like. She’s in six choirs right now plus voice lessons, so we take her to a lot of rehearsals and go to a lot of performances.

Ruby

Ruby’s feet have been worse, if you can believe it. She now uses special arm crutches, even at school, so she can walk longer and her feet don’t hurt quite as much. She is also using her wheelchair a lot more. She spends most of her time at home laying down with her feet up to help with the pain.

She also has issues with most foods. It seems like she’s allergic to everything. She can’t have dairy and or soy and anything else she has to eat slow, small portions more often, and can’t eat very much before bed. She often just gives up and has butter or something that bothers her less than other things because everything hurts her stomach, so she may as well enjoy what she is eating.

We do have an appointment with the genetic specialist in a month we have been waiting six months to get into but while I have been going to my fancy, expensive doctor I asked him what he thought about people with connective tissue disorders and how come some have pain and some don’t.

He said people with her problem basically have weak collagen with gaps in it and it’s easy for microbes to get in there and get comfy and not want to leave. It’s been really hard watching Ruby in so much pain so I started taking her to my new doctor. He ran a lot of blood work and found out she has 9 different microbes in her body (I have six and we only have two that are the same). Three of which are lyme. He doesn’t want to waste time and is starting her on SOT therapy right away.

SOT therapy is a little hard to explain but you get your blood drawn, they send it to the lab in Greece, they take it and mix it with something else and send it back. About three weeks later you go back in and get an IV infusion with this special stuff (short segments of RNA and DNA). What it does is wait until the lyme bacteria starts to try to replicate, which it does by dividing in half and when it is open and vulnerable the stuff attaches onto it so it can’t replicate.

This stuff lasts about six months in your body slowly finding and stopping every lyme bacteria from replicating that it can. Eventually the idea is every microbe has gone through a life cycle and died by then. It is supposed to have a really high success rate. It has to be done for each microbe, although she is going to start two different lymes a few weeks apart. They said she can feel bad at first as a reaction to the die-off. Here is a link to their website to learn more about it if you want.

It is really expensive so we’re really praying it works. The doctor thinks this is the best treatment to try to help with Ruby’s pain.

Becca

I’ve been working on finding the correct dose for my LDI and it is just taking forever (ok, almost three months), and in the meantime I don’t feel any better. I expressed my frustration to my health coach on Friday and she said we may as well start me on SOT therapy too since that is what will really help me feel better. We’re going to keep working on the LDI dose while we wait for the SOT to come since she thinks we’re getting close to finding the correct LDI dose.

My Work

Everyone always asks how my work is going so it’s time for an update. My plant selling business has been going really well. It did well in the Fall, but ironically, picked up a lot in December and January when I thought it would be really slow. I think this is in part because three different plant Youtubers did unboxings of my plants.

I got to the point where I earned more than I spent on my initial investment a few months ago and that helped a lot so all the money I earn is profit and not to pay myself back. I made a full-time salary the last few months, which is validating and proof of concept to me. I’ve been praying about it a lot and finally felt like it was time to quit my actual job mid-February.

I talked to my boss and she wanted me to stay until the end of April (so 2.5 months) and I said I wouldn’t stay past the end of March. We ended up agreeing on me staying until the end of March but only working every other work day, so one week I work T TH and the next week I work M W F – so I always have a three day weekend.

It’s really annoying to work for so long after you quit but my boss is busy and it takes her a lot time to hire someone and for me to train them. She’s trying to get me to clear up every problem and write down all the instructions before I leave, which I don’t blame her, but it’s hard when I’m not working as much and when I really don’t want to be there at all.

Oh, well. The end will eventually come and I can focus on my plant business full time (or hopefully a little less). I’m hoping to not work much more on my business, other than maybe being better at posting on my plant Instagram page and making an occasional YouTube video. Other than that, I need the time to do personal and Mom things.