How has Lyme Disease affected your life? What inspires you?
In honor of Lyme Disease Awareness Month, I wanted to do a post but also hesitated because to me and the hundreds of thousands of other patients who have walked this journey, our struggles are not confined to 1 month… for me it has been a process of nearly 12 years come May 19th and seven of those years have been an all out fight for my life.
How do you sum up the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and YEARS of some of the hardest and most difficult moments of your life into a little square? I honestly don’t think that you can… BUT what I do hope is to encourage those in the dark that there is light and hope.
That while I still have some treatment left (for other health issues and recovery from the damage) healing is possible, because the healing that so many of you have been praying for more than half a decade is truly happening and I know complete healing is coming.
The picture on the left was snapped years ago, before I started with my current medical team. I was once again in the ER and had just been told by 3 well known medical facilities that there was “no hope” for my case. I had also been told that I should be prepared to die in the next few months.
7 months after that picture was taken, I found my current main medical team and in my first conversation with my kind doctor, I told her that if I was going to die, to let me know. I felt at the end with no hope. She looked at me and firmly said, “You won’t die. We will fight to not only save your life, but get it back.” I immediately broke down in sobs. She went on to tell me that it would be the hardest fight of my life that I ever had and it was/has been.
I have been offered several times to write a personal book of my story and maybe someday I will, but it feels impossible to share the details of those dark and hopeless days… It’s been 5 years of intense treatment, thousands of oral meds, hundreds of shots (both and homeopathic), months upon months of IV antibiotics, hundreds of nutritional IVs, thousands upon thousands of vitamins, oils, and supplements, 1 PICC line, 1 Port, countless doctors appointments, exercise therapy, thousands of alternative treatments (including HBOT, acupuncture, reflexology, detox, – the list is incredibly long etc), hundreds of smoothies and daily cups of greens (something at one point I was told I would never be able to eat again), lots of tears… lots of laughter in pain… emotions and discouragement beyond words, thousands upon thousands of hours of prayer… but in the darkness there has been so much grace…
The kindness of loved ones, of amazing parents, of my family, of the best doctors, nurses, MAs and staff that you could even imagine… of financial donations that allowed me to get treatment at the sacrifice to themselves, laughter, and most of all hope.
I recently got a 2nd opinion on one of the health issues I am still needing treatment for (Mycoplasma Pneumonia) and this well known doctor told me…”I’m sorry I don’t see much hope for your case…” I looked at him and actually smiled. I said, “I know you don’t and 2011 Rebecca might have agreed with you, but 2019 Rebecca is here to tell you I will visit you when I have beaten it.” Don’t let ANYONE tell you healing isn’t possible.
Thank you for your prayers which has gotten me to the picture on the right (taken recently)… A girl who is still in treatment, but truly healing and has seen the goodness of the Lord. I weep as I know what it is to be cared for tenderly by God. “The Lord has done great things.”
Oh… and Lyme Disease Awareness month? My prayer is to live in a world where it is not necessary because healing has come. #takethatlyme
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