How has Lyme Disease affected your life? What inspires you?
May 1 marks the start of Lyme Disease Awareness month, so here we go…. It took 5 years from my first lyme-related ER visit to diagnosis, during which time the disease spread to my brain, heart, lungs, central nervous system, and pretty much every tissue in my body. By 2016, I was sleeping 18-20 hours a day, had lost feeling in my hands and feet, and was so cognitively impaired that I had trouble reading a dinner menu or speaking in complete sentences. Despite the fact that I was living in the backwoods of New Hampshire, no doctor in 5 years thought to even test me for Lyme. Awareness is so important to me because awareness is the *only* thing that can prevent others from getting as sick as I did.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years compensating for, or covering my illnesses and the remaining time making jokes about them to lighten the mood. So for the month of May, my resolution is to share more of the honest truth about Lyme in the hope that it helps others recognize symptoms earlier than I did. With 427,000 new cases diagnosed each year in the US, it’s more important now than ever <3