Getting Through the Days When I Can't Deny How Lyme Disease Has Affected My Family

I would consider myself a positive person. Lyme disease on most days hasn’t changed that for me. My husband is soon to start his third month of treatment for this brutal disease. After $5,200 spent, two doctors visits, and many pills taken, recently he started to see a little improvement. There were about two solid weeks where most days were good days — not great of course, but there were days my husband laughed and woke up with zero brain fog and was able to feel halfway normal for the first time in months — maybe even a year really. I got to see the man I married break out of his shackles that the parasite borrelia burgdorferi have chained on him. It was a great view to see — I think it refilled both of our hope tanks and reminded us what is to come on the other side of this thing.

That is why it was so devastating to see his smiles leave, to see the disease creep back in over night and to awake with the feeling of no progress, brain fog, the same days of going to bed at 7 p.m. and the feeling of being right back at square one. These are the days of treatment that are the hardest for me — the days I can’t deny what this disease has stolen from our family: time, thousands of dollars, happiness, and health. These are the days that I mourn the loss of our previous life. These are the days when I look at my two sleeping babies and weep hoping they don’t remember this part of their childhood, when Daddy was so sick and Mommy was running on empty going to sleep at night thinking they didn’t get the best of us because this disease had stripped us of the ability to be at our best for the time being.

These are the days when I am unable to think long term, to plan anything, because I’m unsure of what the future brings. These are days when everything feels like unstable ground and I feel like I could crack at any minute. Most of the times when I write for mainly therapeutic reasons. In my words I basically give myself a pep talk, saying, I know things will get better, I know this won’t last forever. However, on days like this, I can’t stomach those words because there is a part of me that questions if those things are really true. My husband is due to up some of his most herxing meds next week. A “Herxheimer reaction” is when your immune system is so busy fighting what is trying to destroy it that it makes your symptoms 10 times worse for the time being, so needless to say things are probably going to get worse before they get better.

I know we will get through it — even on days like today when I question everything, when I cry typing — even on these days, I still know we will get through it, because we have no other choice… because these two people are counting on us.

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