How has Lyme affected your life? What inspires you?
Lyme is hard, even harder in a Podunk town no one knows.. I found a tick embedded in me June of 2016, the first time in my entire life I had ever been bitten.. I’ve lived my life outdoors, I’m from NEPA and that’s what we do. I mean, I LITERALLY live in the mountains.. hunted, fished, camped, hiked, swam, gardened, quad rides, snow boarded, horseback riding, everything you can think of, I did! Now I feel like I can’t even muster up the energy to take a shower; much less go to the bank. I went untreated for almost an entire year! My family, friends, bf, they all sort of forgot it was happening. I didn’t talk about it much, and when I did they pushed it aside because two doctors told me I didn’t have it.. when I was bit, I had every sign and symptom of Lyme except a bull’s-eye. I started the doxy, and bam! There it was! Huge, and in your face. I knew for a year, I had not had any other changes in my life for me to feel so horrible. I would be told to go to a Doctor if I felt so bad, and to do something about it. I made an appointment, but with Lyme being such an epidemic in NEPA, the specialist has a wait list of 3 months for people trying to get in on their own. I’d tell people I have an appointment and their response was that I made one with “a Lyme disease doctor..” like I was crazy. They didn’t get it. I itch like a junkie from one of the three other diseases that came along with this sh*t and I can’t even itch it without hurting! I didn’t want friends to know, for fear of more leery attitudes towards my thoughts so I acted fine. My act only made things worse, made people think even more that I wasn’t really sick. Lyme is hard. I am on seven different medications and I now have to give myself B12 shots daily.. Just because you cannot see it, does not mean it is not there.