From the Introduction: Learning to Listen

About a year after I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, I went into the hospital to do intravenous antibiotics for forty days. Six months earlier I had finished a course of doxycycline after being initially diagnosed with Lyme, and at the time, I thought it was all over, that I was cured. Little did I know it was just the beginning. Lyme had entered my brain, and a kind of meningitis was ravaging my head and body. As I lay in the hospital bed, I began to cry. I was in a state of utter despair. What in the hell was going on? Why was I sick again after taking antibiotics? I began to pray for help, for anyone or anything to show me what was going on, to show me the way.

I could still breathe so I focused on my breathing. Because I couldn’t think properly (Lyme jumbles your brain), I began to feel more. If I can still feel, and I can still breath, and I can still love, I still exist, I thought. Then I “felt” into my brain and asked, What’s the matter? as if my brain were a little baby. I felt like a mother who senses something is wrong with her baby, even though he or she can’t speak. With all of the love and tender feelings I could muster, I “cradled” my brain and asked again: What’s the matter? I love you, brain. What’s the matter?

Then a miracle happened. I had a vision. I saw a beautiful large oak tree in the woods, and up the side of the trunk, shelf mushrooms were growing. Rows and rows of these beautiful mushrooms spiraled up the tree toward the sky.

I remembered three kinds. Two I recognized from my work as a field biologist as reishi mushrooms, another was a turkey tail mushroom, and the third I had to wait till I got out of the hospital to look up, but it was called chaga.

I need these, I thought.

The vision was so clear and from a place of love that I knew there must be something to it. Once I was out of the hospital, I researched the mushrooms. It turns out that reishi mushrooms have been used for thousands of years as an immune booster in Chinese medicine. Turkey tail mushrooms are also immune boosters and are part of an anticancer drug currently being developed and tested called PSK, and chaga is another incredible immune booster (Stamets, 1999).

Intuitive Science

After I got out of the hospital, I began to hone my intuitive skills, much like one would practice an instrument or develop a muscle. I began to practice the art of intuitive sensory perception inside my own body and write down what I was seeing, tasting, smelling, and hearing during my motherly loving meditations.

Then I had another breakthrough. One day during my inward viewing, I saw the cysts, those nasty little “eggs” that Lyme transforms into. The cysts can lie dormant for up to a year or more (see chapter 6 for more information about the cysts). I saw these round little eggs inside my brain. I saw rows of them like peas in a peapod, coated with slim (a biofilm). But I also saw a pencil on top of each egg. I couldn’t understand what this image was. A week later, I saw them again in my meditation--pencils on top of eggs. OK, then, I thought, what the hell does a pencil over an egg mean? As I worked with my sensory perception, I began to learn that my body’s intuition would symbolically speak to me and to think outside the box.

I thought, A pencil, hmmm, a pencil contains lead. Does this mean I have lead poisoning? Wait, a pencil contains black lead or graphite, right? But that’s poisonous too. I couldn’t figure it out, and I gave up. Then about a week later, I wandered into the supplement section in Whole Foods Market (as nearly every Lyme patient does) and noticed the homeopathic aisle. I saw one little blue tube identified with the word “Graphites.” Graphites, I thought. That’s black lead! Holy Moses! What do Graphites do exactly? I read the homeopathic pamphlet in the store on Graphites: “Graphites can dissolve toughened skin, scars, boils, and cysts.” Oh, my God, this is what my intuition was telling me! Pencils over eggs! I now believe that Graphites and similar homeopathic remedies are important for dissolving Lyme cysts, and this substance became a key component to my healing.

After this particular incident, I began to write down everything I could, and I started trusting the deeper wisdom that came through the senses and from a place deeper than my mind.

Liberating Yourself from Lyme is written from the intuitive information I have received, as well as investigating the science to back up what I was intuiting. As an artist and a scientist, I have been blessed with the ability to intuit remedies and then do my best to back them up with science (although that wasn’t always possible). By utilizing my intuition, I am in no way invalidating science, as I believe the scientific process is essential for collecting information and facts. This intuitive process is a kind of spiritual science, like an inner Sherlock Holmes looking for clues. It has been both a humbling and validating process in many ways, teaching me to trust my intuition just as much as I would trust the knowledge of a doctor. I would often be “shown” a remedy and then find the medical research that confirmed what I had intuited. This method helped me validate what I was seeing and sensing. In addition to many common antibiotics and herbs, I discovered several unusual medicines and techniques for Lyme that I had never heard of, and I offer them here to help others as they have helped me.