I still don't know how I got Lyme disease. One of the telltale signs of Lyme can occur within the first few weeks of being bitten: a circular rash with a red outer border (hence the “bull’s-eye”), along with joint aches and flu-like symptoms.Īccording to the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), fewer than 50% of patients with Lyme disease recall a rash and fewer than 50% of patients recall getting bitten by a tick. They transmit the Lyme bacteria - and a host of other co-infections that can make you just as sick - through their bite within 36 hours of attaching themselves to your body. Their bites are often painless and go unnoticed by their human hosts. Most Lyme cases are caused by infected nymph ticks, infant ticks that are poppy-seed-sized. The spirochete can drill into any part of the body and affect every organ system, from the joints to the brain, and like syphilis (also caused by a spirochete) is a “great imitator” of a myriad of other diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, MS, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue…and mental illness. This bacterium, named Borrelia burgdorferi after Willy, is shaped like a spiral and called a spirochete. It wasn’t until 1981 that researcher Willy Burgdorfer identified that an organism carried by deer ticks was the culprit for these arthritic symptoms. Lyme disease first appeared in the 1970s in Old Lyme, Connecticut, where a cluster of children mysteriously came down with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. So I continued to smile through my numb face. Sometimes I wonder: If I had stayed in bed until a concerned friend or family member dragged me out to the doctor and said, Something is really wrong with this girl, would things have turned out differently? Instead, I thought that looking presentable, having clean hair, and never letting myself cry until after I left the doctor’s office would get me better treatment. Apparently, you can’t be seriously ill if you look great. I forced it to eat, but I lost weight anyway. I discovered that I could force my body to do almost anything, even though all that felt physically possible was to stay in bed and watch Netflix, like, forever. To prove it, I exercised more, meditated every day, kept up social appearances. My doctor prescribed an antidepressant, even though I swore I wasn’t depressed. And I had no memory of ever being bitten by a tick. That and a bull’s-eye rash from a tick bite. And my aches were muscular, not joint aches, which mainstream medicine considers one of the few objective signs of Lyme. He said that psychiatrists aren’t doctors and that there are too many false positives for Lyme. 3 to test me for Lyme disease, which a psychiatrist family friend had suggested, he refused. I went from one useless doctor to the next. Paired with the Fatigue, they pushed me deeper into an alternate reality as illness took hold. And I had these horrible body aches that were deep and rolling and buzzing. The Fatigue was an entirely different animal from even being totally exhausted. Within a month of that first ER visit, I was so tired that no amount of sleep or caffeine could snap me out of it. She told me it was probably just a vitamin deficiency, wrote down the name of a chocolate calcium supplement on her pad, and handed me my candy prescription. When the doctor finally came around, I was crying because I was alone and hospitals feel like prisons. The next day, I went to the ER, where I waited six hours. As I smiled at the cute intern sitting across from me, I realized that the right side of my face was numb. My first coherent memory of my body’s revolt happened while I was at my new internship at a nonprofit. I remember thinking, Please, please don’t let this feeling ever end. Spring hit early, and I was pathologically happy. I had finally gotten over a bad heartbreak, after living in Europe for six months, and I returned to New York bursting with energy and goodwill. Right before I got sick, I had never felt better. And it is only because I stopped listening to the medical and scientific powers-that-be who told me this was all in my head. I’ve been on antibiotics nearly a year, and I may need years more. I turned to what is known by chronic Lyme sufferers as a “Lyme-literate doctor.” This is a doctor who sees my illness as a tricky, chronic infection that needs more than the recommended two weeks to one month of antibiotics. It took that long, and that many doctors, for me to stop trusting the medical establishment and start trusting what my body was telling me: I am really sick. And you can only say “I feel like I’m dying” so many times before it falls on deaf ears - and even doctors have deaf ears.īy the time I was diagnosed with Lyme disease in August 2014, I had been sick for two and a half years and seen 13 doctors. It’s like saying “Enjoy your youth” to a teenager. There’s no way to explain illness to someone who hasn’t been ill.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |