Cinchona Bark Tea
Covid, the added complication to the mix. I’m the person that will get really sick from it, or at least I was. When the quarantine began, I had just been bitten by the spider and I was swelling a lot. My lungs were full of fluid and I was struggling with breathing. Covid was a really big fear, and the person who was the most concerned was Scott. I decided that the best thing was for me to go into confinement. I could control myself and stay isolated, and I needed to do that for Scott to know I was safe.
As the quarantines lifted, I began to enter the world, but masked. I will not be getting the vaccine. Autoimmune disease runs full force in my family and in me, and that means my body responds badly to vaccines. There are things added to the vaccine to make your immune system go a little crazy to create immunity, which work in normal people, but in people with autoimmune disease, those things make the immune system go really crazy and attack more parts of the body. I’m so sensitive to things, that we don’t trust my body’s ability to handle any part of a vaccine.
I needed a different strategy going forward, and it has been slowly evolving. There’s a lot of controversy over if the anti-malaria medication prevent covid, but I’ve seen enough to be convinced. Atovaquone may not be 100% effective, but it is quite effective, and I’ve been using it with common sense to function in society. Now that I’ve stopped it, I need a different preventative, and I’ve turned to the first of the anti-malaria medications, quinine, found in the bark of the cinchona tree.
It took a bit for us to figure out the cinchona bark tea and begin using it. One of my friends was telling me a lot about hydroxychloroquine and covid prevention, Kamaile was researching some of it, and then I mentioned it to Scott. He’s big into history, so he immediately began telling me how the British Army used tonic water to prevent malaria in their soldiers. The tonic water was made with quinine to prevent malaria, and that quinine was extracted from cinchona bark.
I first began cinchona bark tea before babesia treatment. It is easy to overdose, so I started in slowly, but almost immediately began feeling a bit more energy. I like the taste of it, so adding it to my daily regimen was easy. I stopped as soon as I began atovaquone, fearing overdosing. I began again, and I’m herxing. All the anti-malaria medications seem to work on parasites as well as preventing covid from reproducing. My vacation from treatment isn’t going as planned. If I want to protect myself from covid, I need to take things that attack babesia. They go together, so I have to accept that. No vacations for me.
The herbals seem to be working as well as the atovaquone without some of the really bad side effects. My muscles seized up from the atovaquone, so I have to stop taking it to get the dead babesia out of my body. My muscles don’t seize up from cinchona bark tea, so at least this herxing is getting stuff out of my muscles. The yoga seems to be causing a lot of herxing as well. I’m slowly developing a strategy, every day listening to my body and changing things as needed.
I have one other medication to use in rotation for covid prevention, ivomec. It’s not an herb, but a drug, so I don’t know how my body will respond to it. I need to test it, and that’s for another day. For now, I’m happy to be back on my cinchona bark tea, waiting for Scott to tell me it is time to mask up again. I already avoid going to stores, staying home as much as possible, and masking when I feel I need to. I refuse to live the rest of my life in fear, but I’m not going to be stupid about it either. I’m very comfortable with a mask. I wore one years before covid to prevent asthma attacks due to perfumes, and I have no problem wearing one in public. I will social distance and reduce my exposure to people. Life is full of risks. I’ll make the best choices for me and then go on living, not taking any of my days for granted.