What are you doing in the Wee Small Hours of the Morning (Lyme Warrior)?

What are you doing in the Wee Small Hours of the Morning (Lyme Warrior)?

Oh, the middle of the night, the middle of the night. Curse the pain, worry, fear and loneliness in the middle of the night.

Among the varied and scary symptoms with the onset of my Lyme, was the head and chest pressure I experienced when horizontal. I had a condition called CCSVI (Chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency) that came from a co-infection from my Lyme. What it meant was that the blood was pumping into my brain, but my jugular veins were “blocked” so the blood could not drain out from my brain.

Due to this, after everyone in the house fell fast asleep, I would prop up high in bed and the left side of my head and my chest would pound and throb and feel like they could explode. Add this to the 30 other random symptoms I felt and then my anxiety and fear would explode.

Night after night of this and my anxiety would be anticipated and I dreaded the night. I knew I wouldn’t sleep. I knew I would feel worse and be miserable. I would lay there and wonder if this would be the night. I genuinely was surprised for months that I awoke in the morning to get my kids up for school. Curious as to when I would finally fall asleep.

I know many of you experience very similar middle of the night thoughts and symptoms. The anxiety sends the cortisol through the roof so that you lay there in a fight or flight mode. It is a mind over body kind of battle that rages on and on.

Will I die? Will this kill me? Will my family be okay without me? What near death preparations do I need to make? Should I call someone? Should I wake someone up? Should I go to the hospital? Is there anything the hospital can do to help me?

Since the answer to the last question was almost always “no”. (Except for two different ER trips that I gave into the fear and they did nothing and sent me home with sleeping pills) I laid there tortured and in unrest and agony.

The nights were long. The stretched out for months and months. For some of you it is years.

What do you do with your middle of the nights?

Here is what I wish I had done with my middle of the nights much much sooner.

I needed to get to better smarter doctor sooner to help me with my detox, my overall Lyme protocol and my cortisol levels.

I needed to give up on the idea that I would get a good night sleep for a while and should have resided to a chair or recliner for “rest” instead of getting in bed where lying horizontal hurt my body and increased my symptoms.

I needed to find something to do in idle time. Knitting, needlepoint, scrapbooking, etc. Something simple but that I could have done to pass the hours. I picked back up on a few of these things way into my treatment.

I needed to find an online community (uplifting and encouraging) that might have some night owls in it so that I wouldn’t be alone.

I needed to quit focusing on me and on the pain and circumstance.

Read that last one again. Shift your focus. I don’t care what you do put your focus on as long as it is uplifting. Make a future plan for a family trip. Make life goals for when you get well. Write a journal. Listen to an audio book. Get a prayer list from your church and pray for others (this one reallllllly works and helps strengthen you emotionally). Put on some good happy music. Draw. Crochet. Get a new penpal. Sew baby blankets for donation. Make a new fantasy football bracket or team.

Think about something else. The middle of the night is long, lonely, painful and scary. Make the time pass by taking advantage of the time.

I realized except for when my kids were babies, I had never had again so much time alone in the middle of the night. I spent hours in prayer for others. Hours and hours. I don’t have that now that I am well and sleeping. But it was powerful and incredible and God used it to help so many people.

“I can’t do anything for anybody because I feel so terrible”.

Oh, but you can. Prayer, letters, cards and notes can make a difference. Write a letter of encouragement or thanks to someone who will not expect it. Launch a surprise secret encourager campaign for the teachers at your kid’s school or for the mail carriers in your neighborhood.

You can make a difference instead of dwelling on the middle of the night. I know that some nights the pain is so severe you couldn’t focus to write or pray. That’s okay. Really, my middle of the nights were not always pretty and many of them involved tears and cries for healing.

But many of them didn’t. Once I began to use them outside of my illness and outside of myself – everything changed and shifted for the better.

Don’t knock it until you try it.

Blessings and healing,

Janice Fairbairn – The Lyme Evangelist

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