dear frustrated,I am right here for you. You have at least one person to support you (me). First off, you are not a hypochondriac. This is real. It's just not talked about enough (or at all sometimes), and there are many reasons for this. You are not over-exaggerating. I have had the very same feelings.
Please read my post "Sleep cycle reversal/brain herxes" from Nov 30th to get a better understanding of my experience with these difficulties.
I was exactly 23 and in your position. I had come down with lyme and had to take a leave of absence from school. Then I began to heal slowly. I went back to school (graduate) and needed to do my thesis. I chose to do a documentary on Lyme disease. I was so proud of that accomplishment and felt like I had benefited from a painful and horrible situation.
That was 18 years ago. I had been told tha I was cured after 3 weeks of abx. I am now 41 and I have been ill for all these years. I was just diagnosed with Chronic lyme because I wasn't given the proper treatment back then.
You have an advantage because drs. do know what is wrong and you are being treated and have a chance of getting better before it goes any further.
During those years I saw hundreds of drs. NONE knew what I had. It has been degrading because they doubted my illness. Often times I looked o.k. Meanwhile I felt like I was slowly dying on the inside (and I was).
I managed to fake it for so many years because that's what was expected of me. I wasn't diagnosed with chronic lyme until 1 month ago.
Believe that you will be well again. I never gave up hope even through some very nasty complications due to Lyme. And somehow I accomplished things along the way. I had no choice but to pretend to live a normal life,and in doing so I had two children and had some great jobs for a while.
I am disabled now. Without treatment LD has kicked my butt. But with the right medications I am going to fight back and get my life back.
And along the way I have learned so many incredibly important lessons. Things that I would have taken for granted had I not been ill. It hasn't been fun, but I am exactly who I should be today.
It has made me stronger and I have more confidence. Just recently, I was able to look a dr. in the eye (an older male who intimidated me on the 1st appt.) and tell him that he was wrong - that I did have lyme disease- that he was just too comfortablee in his practice to take on a complex patient like myself and that he knew nothing about lyme disease. I told him exactly what I thought. This was the first time I was able to stand up for myselt in front of a dr.
For so many years I believed drs. deserved more respect just because they were drs. What is that all about? They had the power - they were going to heal me. I put them up on a pedestal and I trusted them too much and in doing so I gave away some of my power. I actually let those drs. speak to me in a way that was so inappropriate and degrading. Probably because my life was in their hands that they held the power.
T here are things that I can do with these experiences. I don't really know exactly what. Perhaps speaking to you is one of those things.
I have so much more compassion because of my ailments.
The doom is from the disease. My llmd dr. told me that doom and depression are the bugs working. It's not the real us. Try to believe that you will become better. Believe in your power to heal yourself (along with traditional and nontraditional medicine).
warmest regards
paisley
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