Thursday, June 21, 2012

Strawberries - The Cure for Lyme's Disease

No, strawberries won’t cure Lyme’s disease, but there are plenty of people out there suffering from it and wondering  if they'll ever get better - just like I was last fall.  You won't find a lot of encouragement on the internet, so I thought I would post something positive.  Last October both of my knees were so swollen that I could barely walk.  I thought I just had a bad case of tendonitis but then the blood test came back “strongly positive” for Lyme’s .  That scared me a lot. Surfing the internet for information on Lyme's didn't help.  Seems like there's a lot of horror stories out there, so maybe you'd like to hear one with a happy ending.  Yes, I had a bad case of Lyme’s.  It actually may have been my second case, for I had nearly identical symptoms three years earlier and had fully recovered.  In this instance, I took a prescription of the antibiotic doxycyclene for four weeks and slowly improved thereafter.  I began to cross country ski again and even played ice hockey at Christmas.  The knees were still sore, but improving.  When spring arrived I was riding my mountain bike again.  I don’t know if I have fully recovered or am just in remission, but I can now fully bend my knees and squat without pain.  Last fall I could hardly bend them enough to walk down stairs.  Where do strawberries come in?  Simply this: a couple of days ago while picking strawberries it occurred to me that I could never have done this six months ago.  My knees would have killed me. Now they are pain free. So don’t be discouraged by all the horror stories.  I had a real “impressive case”, in my doctor’s words, and now I am fully mobile again with no residual symptoms.  Keep your head up, take your meds, eat healthy, get your exercise and last, but not least, pray.  You may or may not fully recover, but either way, life is good.

The classic strawberry picker pose, made famous by STK.

19 quarts, a season high for our little patch.  My PR back in the day when I was a professional strawberry picker  (@ 7 cents/quart) was 93.

Strawberries = Summer!

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