Can I be honest? Yesterday (Mother’s Day) was rough on my chronic Lyme disease warrior body. Mind you, I loved watching my son play jazz, and all his fun solos, as well as the rest of the band – and I loved being with my other boys and my husband – but it was dang hard on me.
By the time we were done with the day I had overwhelming arthritis pain, fibromyalgia pain (all over muscle pain), crazy exhaustion/fatigue, and a raging migraine. Sitting hurt, standing hurt, walking hurt and by the time I got home it was all I could do to get to bed and rest my body.
Here’s the thing, when I am living my normal daily life, all these symptoms are bearable, manageable, doable. Why? Because I spend a lot of time either sitting or laying when I’m not active. I rest and recover and that is how I live my life. In bed, or couch, when I’m not taking care of my kids, house, running errands, or walking to get my steps in.
So when I spend hours out in the heat/sun, walking, or standing, it flares and stresses my body and symptoms. And why it always takes me by surprise I do not know. It’s silly that I forget how bad I’m going to feel but I do. I really do. I forget and somehow think I will be okay and you know what? Occasionally it isn’t as bad as yesterday. Often, it’s really bad though. (And vacations, ha, forget about it. I don’t know how I do those at all!)
I still have a lot to learn about healing my body, killing the bacteria, and recovering my health. 13 years in and I feel like I still don’t understand Lyme disease very well, it’s such a complex disease, and healing from complexity is confusing and hard. And now, add onto it I have PoTS too. (Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome)
I am more committed to learning how to heal naturally now than ever and much of that is because I don’t want my youngest son to live a whole life like this. He’s already never known a healthy/normal day (he was born it with it, yes that does happen) and I refuse to believe that will be his forever.
Friends, this disease, and the other diseases it can trigger in your body, are nothing to mess with, nothing to take lightly, nothing to brush off. Please, please take Lyme seriously. Please don’t believe the lies that Lyme is hard to catch and easy to cure and that “chronic” Lyme doesn’t exist. Look at my example and learn from it. It is one of the only good things that can come from this disease in my body, that I could save YOU from living this life.
Thank you for reading this and thank you for your support, kindness, and prayers. I’m a strong ass woman but I’m a strong tired and pained woman. I’m a chronic Lyme disease warrior but warriors get bruised and have to recover. So, here’s to continuing to heal Lyme and understand it better so I can not only live a better life, and help my son do the same, but also so that I can keep spreading awareness so YOU don’t have to figure this all out too.
