I got the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine this week. Surprisingly easy, except for the questions. \”Have you had any COVID symptoms in the past week?\” \”Have you had muscle aches, fever, or fatigue in the past 24 hours?\” Ummmm…yes? I\’ve learned to lie when asked these kinds of questions. It\’s not technically a lie, but the explanation of Lyme is too lengthy to go into. It\’s more of an omission. I easily separate Lyme from the rest of my health history. If someone asks me if I\’m healthy, I say \’yes\’, because I am healthy, aside from Lyme.
Most people my age are on some kind of prescription for something. Blood pressure, cholesterol, thyroid, etc. Not that they aren\’t healthy, but they need a little help. So far, I have none of those problems. The ol\’ colon is clean as a whistle, the boobs lump free, and no weird moles or skin things (thank you, birth mom for my genes, and real mom, for making me wear sunscreen). My blood pressure is always 116/72, my pulse is in the 50s, and my weight is still teetering a few pounds shy of \’mildly obese\’. So yeah, I consider myself healthy.
And yet, almost every day there is something that hurts or doesn\’t feel right. The brain doesn\’t fire properly or my throat hurts, or my joints, or my eyes are blurry and irritated. I\’m fatigued, or my body aches. There are a ton of other minor problems that come and go, like death from a thousand paper cuts, but none of it is a big deal to me anymore. It just is. Once, while at an appointment with my Lyme doctor, I mentioned some things that had been bothering me. He said, \”Why didn\’t you call or go to your primary care doctor?\” I answered, \”Why bother? Almost everything that goes wrong is Lyme-related and disappears or changes.\” He agreed with that, and I\’ve learned that I\’m the one that has to separate how I\’m feeling. I use two categories: \”Lyme-related\” and \”getting old.\”
I suppose there is a third category, the \”Oh shit\” one, but so far, I\’ve been out of that column since I burned my right hand six years ago (I think it was six years ago, but I just got my daughter\’s age wrong, so I can\’t truly be trusted with anything time and date related). The thing is, through Lyme I\’ve learned that people tend to freak out about their health far more than I do. I haven\’t gone to a primary care doctor since that burn, because I haven\’t needed to. Virtually everything wrong with me is Lyme related.
As far as COVID goes, many of us Lyme patients have had to play the really fun game of \”COVID or Lyme?\” After all, the early symptoms for COVID and ongoing Lyme symptoms are virtually the same. I usually allow myself about five minutes to assess how I feel and then I wait to see if anything changes. It usually does, either within hours or days. The pain migrates, disappears, or morphs into another symptom that has nothing to do with COVID.
There is another dimension, the question of how vulnerable Lyme patients are to COVID. My immune system is compromised, but how vulnerable am I really? I chose to stay safe and isolate myself rather than find out the answer to that question. And I chose to answer the pharmacists\’ question as it pertained to COVID, not Lyme. The week before the vaccine, I had been experiencing some old symptoms that I knew well. I had already contacted my LLMD and gotten the answers I needed to begin treatment. I had no fever and I wore a mask. I know my body very, very well and had no doubt that what I was experiencing was not COVID. So I went and got the vaccine.
And after the vaccine, I don\’t know if I had a reaction to the vaccine or if it was Lyme. I guess that part doesn\’t really matter, since it wasn\’t going to change the fact that I had gotten the vaccine. Now I have some measure of comfort that if I were to get it, I won\’t die, or have to go to the hospital. Those are big things, especially for the chronically ill. We are always on the edge of a health care crisis. They always cost money. The last thing I need is one more.
I\’ll continue to separate my general health from Lyme. This paradigm has, oddly enough, motivated me to take the best care of myself so that I can so I can continue to brag that aside from Lyme, that \”I\’m very healthy.\” Diet, exercise, and positive thinking are the only controllable factors I have. If Lyme is the reason I am staying healthy, then that is one of the positive aspects of chronic illness, and that, my friends, is positive thinking.
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