Imagine What It Feels Like to Be Me as a Person With Lyme Disease

Imagine waking up in pain and having to roll out of bed without bending your back because it feels like knives are stabbing you.

Imagine sleeping for hours and days on end yet waking up and feeling completely drained and exhausted.

Imagine having a migraine that lasts weeks and nothing eradicates it. Your legs tingle and have shooting pain all the way from your hips to your toes.

Imagine barely moving yet your heart starts working overtime, and you feel as though you’re having a heart attack.

Imagine being in great pain but trying to walk and act normally so others don’t think you’re being dramatic.

Imagine not being able to explain your symptoms because others will accuse you of being negative.

Imagine taking almost 40 pills a day just to barely get by.

Imagine being unable to do the things you used to love like running, walking, exercising and even having intelligent conversations with people. Your brain is in a fog, and you forget the most basic words. You even forget what you were saying in mid-sentence.

Imagine being doubted by others (even loved ones) because they simply cannot see your disease. It’s like slowly drowning in deep waters while everyone else is sailing away in their safety boats. It’s like being pushed to your knees in quicksand and trying to crawl out.

Imagine having to let go of the life you used to have and the energetic, carefree person you used to be.

Imagine your life being completely changed by one small blood-sucking bug — a tick.

This is my life, and I have to make the best of it. This is not negative, fabricated or hopeless — this is real! The CDC estimates that “300,000 people are diagnosed with Lyme disease in the U.S. every year,” according to LymeDisease.org. 

We pray for a definitive cure, we pray for more accurate testing, we pray for understanding and support, we pray for strength and, most of all, we pray for relief.

This is exactly why we need more funding and research — to lesson the amount of people that fall victim to this terrible disease. And for those of you who are Lyme warriors — or for others going through any other kind of illness or hardship — never give up hope!

I know that one day I will be symptom free and pain free; it’s just going to be a long road. I may move slowly now, but I am not stopping!