But I read about transdermal magnesium and first did a 1:1 ratio of magnesium sulfate (Epsom Salts ) to water, warmed it up until hot, then soaked my feet in it for 20 minutes.  That afternoon I didn’t have the racing heart I’d grown accustomed to every afternoon since January.  (and September – December)  I fell asleep that night without the necessary combo of 2 Benadryl, 3 mg. of melatonin, and Ambien.  The next day I bought some magnesium chloride from a vendor at the farmer’s market (none of my local health food stores carried it, though it can be found online.)  I tried to make “magnesium oil” but it stings when I put it on, so I prefer the foot bath. I cup of magnesium chloride to enough warm water to barely cover my feet.  I reuse it about 4 times, then dump it out and start again.  I also rub it on my face, legs, and arms while I’m soaking my feet.

I thought it was a fluke, so I’ve waited a week before reporting on it.  Now I’ve slept unaided every night since then, which is amazing considering I was back on Ambien since the second week of January, and fearing dependence and withdrawal.  I even have added back in marijuana and alcohol without ill effects, and the last few months it’s been causing worse insomnia and increased anxiety.  Woo hoo!  I’m feeling back to my normal, happy self, and it was as easy as a foot bath!

I’m due to get my period this week, so I should be a grumpy, nervous mess.  Even more proof it’s working.

I visited my psychiatrist only 9 days ago and she suggested the Celexa had “petered out” and I should add a low dose anti-psychotic that they use for depression that also helps with sleep.  I never got the name of it, I was too depressed.  What, 2 months on Celexa, with really only a few weeks of relief, and it had already stopped working?  I cried for a day, then had an enormous pie party to bake for (try inviting 71 people over for 21 pies made in 3 days when you’re suffering from “major depressive disorder” and anxiety.  I pulled it off, but I wish I had discovered the transdermal magnesium before that week.)

Now I get to focus on a trip to LA that was previously making me incredibly anxious (and now I’m getting excited about) and the Hookworm Incubation Project.  My Crohn’s symptoms are slowly coming back (more mucus, more bowel movements, a sore butt because of it), and I’m wondering if I just need a redose every 6 months or something.  I love the high, but I got a full 6 weeks of side effects last September, including neurological ones, so I’m not that keen.  I also need to do an egg count.

Hopefully I’ll manage both before we leave, and the little yogurt maker will be incubating away while we are out.  We have a secured, seperate locked room, so no animals or children can mess with the experiment.  I still feel paranoid about writing about it, but how else are we going to learn about it?

I won’t provide links to the transdermal magnesium, since it’s mostly testimonials, but I recommend anyone suffering from depression, anxiety, insomnia, muscle fascillations, charlie-horses, longstanding IBD, to soak your feet in hot liquid magnesium chloride or sulfate every night.  It’s a wonderful cure.

Worms and foot baths.  Highly recommended.

The short list of suffering? My joints hurt. This time in my hands, hips, and ankles. My muscles are sore. And not from activity. My nerves hurt. At times they burn, other times just sore to the touch. I am slightly dizzy at times. My lips are tingling, hands and lower arms sometimes go numb. I’ve had terrible anxiety and depression, which caused insomnia, somewhat managed by Celexa and Ambien. Not sure whether to blame that on the worms or just the fear of the symptoms they cause, or just the hell of the last few years. Sometimes my head tingles. My muscles are twitching. All over, jumping around.

In February the nerve stuff got so bad that I went to a neurologist at UCSF who ran a brain MRI and nerve conductivity test. The good news, is they came back normal. I had had a bunch of iron shots then to correct longstanding iron deficiency, and I blamed the “neuropathy” on that, but this time, nothing has changed but new hookworms. The same thing happened last year, but I had a few iron shots then, so couldn’t be certain what was what.

I had a kind of similar thing happen a few months after being on LDN, but it was more acute and included a rash all across my bottom, so we concluded I had grown allergic to sulfasalazine which I was also on. I stopped the sulfa, but then flared and had to stop the LDN, so I never learned the cause. Later, I went back on LDN for a few months and it didn’t happen.

So I have to conclude these are all worm side effects. In the Spring, it slowly got better, but by summer I was still twitching and that’s when the anxiety began. But as the symptoms got better, the Crohn’s got worse. Last year, the symptoms completely resolved when I lost my worms.

So Crohn’s disease or nerve/muscle/arthritis weirdness? I truly am hoping it’s a temporary reaction and then the immune system settles into a comfortable happy medium. Throughout this year, my blood tests have been mostly normal; no markers of inflammation, so whatever is going on, if it is inflammatory, isn’t registering on the CRP and ESR scale.

Interesting that the House episode included tetany as one of his presenting symptoms, but I got scared watching that, and didn’t see past the first 10 minutes, and my husband forbids me to see the rest insisting I can’t get clues from a House episode, but wonder where the tetany as a symptom of liver worms came from?

One other patient with a host of autoimmune diseases is 3 months into his worm infection, and has similar side effects – he had just calf twitching and is now twitching all over, has bad joint pain, and some dizziness. I don’t know about the nerve issues.

This is one of the bad things about not going through a study. We have no idea of the numbers of responses, how often this occurs, or why.

I’ve had Crohn’s disease for 21+ years and have never had arthritis, nerve pain, muscle pain, or dizziness in my life. So I can’t attribute it to that. The only extra-intestinal manifestation I’ve had was a skin condition that happened once, after putting some chemical with skull and crossbones on my fingers, and I still have scars from it. erythema nodosum. I was a nanny in Ireland at the time and it took months to abate. That was lovely.

So it’s not all – take worms get better. Suffer temporarily. The suffering seems to come with each infection, and lasts for months. I’d kill the worms and see if it all goes away (as my Crohn’s worsens) but without a source, I don’t dare. And I’m 10 weeks in, with the hope it will abate in the next 2 months. I don’t want to start over.

Definately not a bed of roses.

And I’ve still got a lovely miscarriage in front of me, the bleeding of which has just gently started.

When do the good times begin? I ate Thanksgiving food at least, with real bread stuffing for once in a decade. But I still had gas.

Before anyone writes a criticism of my using these drugs whilst pregnant, let me assure you that I don’t want to hear it.  I am fully capable of researching every aspect of my care, and having read miles of literature claiming I’d have a malformed fetus with withdrawal problems, I finally went to a wonderful doctor at Planned Parenthood and was assured that many, many women have had normal pregnancies on Zoloft, and Celexa was probably safe as well, Ambien was a class B as was the Benedryl I was using to try to sleep, and a healthy mom makes a healthy child.  So I gave in, took 1/4 a dose of the Celexa, and finally feel like I may not have to kill myself after all.

I am now walking every afternoon, when the anxiety takes a grip to my heart and convinces me that I will never be well, to go by the river, watch the daredevils at the skatepark.  Wonder if one day one of them will be my son.  Watch the egrets stand one legged in the tidal waters, seagulls squacking in large groups.  Climb the hill that doesn’t even make me sweat.  Cross the trestle to the Boardwalk, and take my shoes off, walk in the sand to the ocean, sit.  And meditate.  Force my negative mind to shut up.  Every time I fail and open my eyes, the horizon beckons, the beautiful blue, blue ocean. Surfers, skimboarders.  Gleeful dogs and children remind me that happiness exists, right here in front of my eyes, and I close my eyes again and try to think of nothing, banish the evil thoughts that a lifetime of Crohn’s has etched rivulets in my mind

And that little 1/4 a dose of seratonin is helping.  I feel it already.  I may yet be happy.  There’s a walk every day to go on and the same grey egret has been there, 3 days in a row, the exact same place.  Standing on one leg.  Looking under the bridge.  Thinking egret thoughts.

I’m still having diarrhea sometimes.  Now I’m getting nauseous.  I oscillate between what the hell am I doings and wow, I’m finally well enough to be pregnant!  And then I worry…. now no one will treat me.  What if I lose my worms?  I must incubate soon and infect my husband, have a resevoir donor at hand…can’t get anasthesia.  I try not to go there, but my restless mind is going to take enormous will to control, but enormous will I have.  I have more will than hope, but maybe in a few weeks, that too will mend.

I catch my reflection in car windows, and wow, I look strong.  If nothing else, this disease, this treatment, this life, has made me an old woman in a late 30’s body.  I may be lacking in the wisdom, but I have more strength than almost anyone I know.

I’m still alive.  I’m sleeping.  I’m still pregnant.  Last I checked, I still have worms.  I really have an amazing life.  Take away the Crohn’s, and anyone would envy me.  I try hard to remember that.  Tomorrow I’ll walk again.

My bowel movements have gotten looser.  I’m having more mucus between and before them.  For the last 2 weeks, I’ve just felt nauseous, and haven’t had much appetite.  I’ve had night sweats for the last 4 nights.  My daughter has a cold and a slight cough, so maybe that’s contributing?

The nueropathic symptoms have come back.  Kind of negates the whole iron theory, as the last iron shot was in late April.  I also found a journal entry with similar syptoms while on Remicade.  At the time, I was trying to go back on sulfasalazine, and thought it was from that.  The second time, I was on LDN and sulfa and had a rash.  The sulfa seemed the culprit.  The third time was last year, while on hookworms receiving iron shots.  This year, it happened just after dosing with hookworms and then iron shots as well.  I’m wondering too if it isn’t malnutrition – low magnesium from the years of chronic diarrhea.  I sat with my doctor yesterday and we theorized that perhaps I’m just malnourished, so when it’s hot and I sweat, I dip below the threshold.  The only way to know my true magnesium levels is to take a muscle biopsy, he said.  We both looked at each other and I said, “No thanks.  I think I’ll just take magnesium supplements and see…”

I did an egg count last week, just in case the regression was from losing worms, but I got 1050 epg again, steady as the last 2 counts, so no decline in egg production.  Can’t blame that.

The absolute unknown about this therapy has taken its toll.  How long will the effects last?  Is it related to worm burden?  Are the good effects temporary?  Does one require a boost every so often?  Yearly?  Every 6 months?  Would more worms make me better or worse right now?  I have absolutely no idea, and am afraid to try.

Fear.  It has taken its hold.  I had another bout of insomnia over the weekend, and anxiety over other issues.  My chest has tightened.  My heart starts racing.  I cannot sleep.  The memory of illness is so recent, it hangs like a specter over my heart.  If I dip down into those symptoms again – if the hookworms stop working, all I have left is Tysabri.  If I get sick like last year, or the year before, I’d rather die than go through that again.  But I have children, so I can’t commit suicide.  They’d rather have me here, even if I’m bedridden.

I’ve given in and am joining the ranks of the medicated.  Yesterday, I started Lexipro, an SSRI that is used for anxiety and depression.  I wish the worms were enough, but they’re not.  So I’m hoping this medication can take an edge off of my chronic fear.  I just want to feel well again.  I want to be well for longer than a few months.  I want to know if this therapy is going to work long term for me.  I want to be on good terms with everyone doing this.  My strength is crumbling and I cry at any provocation, I feel so weak, I cannot carry the torch of this much longer.

The CBS interview makes it seem like trying hookworms is so easy.  No one knows that Scott lost his worms somehow and redosed with 25, the same number he had originally, and couldn’t take the side effects and terminated.  25 was probably too high for his sensitivity, but he’s afraid of trying hookworms again.  And that I got edema and reactive arthritis with my first dose of 10, but redosing was easy.  But now I’m regressing, and the video goes on.

It’s why I hate testimonials.  Having a story out there circulating about my wellness, when I am no longer well, without being able to update it at any time.  People are trying this because of me, and looking towards my experience, learning from it.  Sometimes I think I should have stayed silent and published this blog 3 years into the experience, so I’d know for sure what path these worms had for me.

But I’m here, waiting.  I really hope it’s just the flu.  I guess another few weeks will tell.  Hopefully by then, the Lexipro will kick in, and I can decide what to do next without such a heavy heart.   I just want to be well forever.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18328783

I just read the abstract, but basically it’s linking depression and
anxiety to our modern lifestyle. Is it just me, or are most of your
relatives on anti-depressants? My whole family needs worms!

I’m not surprised that in the inflammatory reaction period to
hookworm, some of us are getting depression. And then, some of us are
having moments of calm, elation, or just a lifting of a heavy burden
of dread. I’m so curious to see if my mental state changes radically
once I’m in remission. My husband is finding me much more humorous
lately. Perhaps since I am no longer living in fear of impending
death? Or its the hookworms; it’s hard to tell.

Amazing how the absence of microbes can cause so much
misery. I’m going out to the garden now to raise my spirits. It
seems that getting your hands in the dirt, literally, can cure depression;

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article1596735.ece

Worms, dirt, a pet pig (prevents Crohn’s as long as you don’t give
antibotic feed, then you’re more likely to get asthma). We’re getting chickens this
Thursday; I wonder what protection they’ll bring? At the very least, some good eggs.