Life and Lyme
Muddling Through Life with Lyme Disease
The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.
Joseph Conrad
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ogled
Read more: ogledI went to Victoria\’s Secret with my daughter Katie last week. She just turned thirty. I am fifty-eight. If you are the mother of a daughter, there comes a day of reckoning, a watershed moment that is not always welcomed. The day men\’s eyes slide right past you and land squarely on your daughter. I…
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mess
Read more: messI was once a hot mess. I know this because I\’ve asked old friends what they thought of me back then. There was no rhyme or reason for my behavior in my teens and early twenties. I was completely unaware that I was, in my own way, desperately trying to work through my damage. Sometimes…
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hope
Read more: hopeI spent yesterday afternoon in a room full of Lyme patients. It was the first time I had been around so many Lyme sufferers. We were all gathered at the Tattered Cover to hear Dr. Richard Horowitz. For those of you who don\’t know, he is a demi-god in the pantheon of Lyme doctors. He\’s…
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mom
Read more: momMy mom. Were there ever two words with more baggage? I have two moms: my biological mom and the mom who is my mother. I can\’t imagine what it would be like to adopt three children, let alone get them all in one year. First, my brothers. They were biological brothers from an orphanage in Germany.…
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rebellion
Read more: rebellionGetting completely well is harder than I thought. I am so close to the end yet farther away than ever. This is where I should get some kind of power surge, both mental and physical. I am sputtering. No surges here. Instead, my head and body seem united in a small rebellion. Anyone who knows…
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body
Read more: bodyI like my body. I\’ve never quite trusted it, because it was broken when I was seven. I fell out of a tree and fractured my skull. I was in a coma for about a week. It\’s funny what you remember about hospital stays, especially when you\’re young. I definitely remember the nurses coming in…
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confinement
Read more: confinementBeing sick is boring. I used to joke that Lyme had transformed me into a swooning Victorian lady until shit got real. Then it wasn\’t funny anymore. Seriously, think what it must have been like to be sick before, say, 1910. There would have been days, weeks, hell, months of confinement with little to do but lie there.…
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lapses
Read more: lapsesNow that I am attempting to resume my interrupted life, I\’m discovering a few things. Earlier in my life, I had many surgeries, mostly for having a reproductive system, but also cryosurgery to repair a torn retina and ACL replacement. After each of those surgeries, there was a period of time that I simply lost.…
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holiday
Read more: holidayAs Christmas approaches, I am entering another year of purposely downplaying the holidays. I know, call me a Grinch if you want, but I bet my Christmas is way more relaxing than yours. This idea that holidays are the end-all be-all of everyone\’s life has always rankled. My dad is notorious for disliking almost all…
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stamina
Read more: staminaI have lost my stamina. I\’ve become the person others look at to feel better. You know, the \”my life sucks, but it could be worse, I could be as sick as Melissa\” line. I know, because I\’ve done that. Haven\’t we all? One of my guilty pleasures used to be \”Toddlers and Tiaras\”. Yes.…
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symptoms
Read more: symptomsI don\’t write much about the symptoms of Lyme. For one, it\’s a rather long list. For another, who really cares, except for me, who experiences them? But I\’ve been thinking about symptoms lately, because now that I\’m getting out more, people ask me what my symptoms were. I kind of hem and haw and…
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presentation
Read more: presentationI have started dating. No reason, whatever was holding me back isn\’t anymore. For me, decisions like this one are generally stewed over for a while and then, poof! the switch is thrown. Once thrown, it\’s full steam ahead. Dating at 58 is no different than 18, emotionally. By 58, though, you have to worry…
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