A diagnosis of Chronic Lyme disease with a co-infection of Rickettsia!
A mother of four, always on the go, working, socialising with friends, active in the community, exercising 3 times a week, hiking with the kids at the weekends and taking pride in my life and my home. Over the course of a year this all disappeared and was replaced with a 7 stone broken woman who couldn’t get out of bed to even bring her children to school.
Looking back now I haven’t been well for years, I just didn’t realise it because I didn’t know they were symptoms. At least 7 years, possibly longer but that’s as far back as I can go. Little things like back pain, joint pain, feeling like I’d pulled muscles if I’d exercise and not being able to walk with the pain in my feet after wearing heels the night before. I put these things down to having four children very close in age and just general wear and tear. Then came the stomach problems, ovulation pain, over sensitivity to light and sound, heat sensitivity, blurry vision, neck pain and excessive sweating. Bloods good, stomach checked over, a few visits to a chiropractor to help with pain, new glasses, a few Vit B12 injections and continue on. Then the fatigue.. I was always tired.
Always sleepy. Needing to catch 20 mins sleep at my desk in work (thankfully I’m self employed so could do this). Needing to sleep when the children were in school to get through the day. Brain fog, but I was always busy and I struggled to fall asleep at night so of course I’m going to be tired. Then there comes a time when you’ve no choice but to stop and listen to your body. That for me was in March 2020. I started having what I thought were panic attacks. Heart palpitations and vibrations in my chest and weakness in my legs. Then I noticed a pattern and more symptoms came that didn’t go hand in hand with anxiety… and so began a year of me getting progressively sicker and spending my time between doctors visits and hospitals. I tried to push through but from August 2020 I was pretty much bedridden. I seemed to be adding new symptoms every time I saw my doctor and the ones I had were getting more severe.
I could barely stand unaided, I had tremors, twitches, headaches, head pressure, tinnitus, dizziness, facial numbness, I couldn’t eat without my whole body reacting and I was always in pain, and this was taking a mental toll on me too. Why was I not strong enough to get out of bed to spend time with my children? The guilt of that alone nearly killed me. Test after test came back ok and bloods were good. On paper I was reasonably healthy. By November I had been admitted to hospital twice, had an endoscopy and a colonoscopy, was diagnosed with gastritis and diverticulitis, had ultrasounds, CT scans, brain, neck, back MRI’s and bloods being monitored regularly. The majority of these paid for privately. Still nothing. I knew there was something else going on but had very little fight left in me and no clue where to even go from here.
Then one day I got a phone call from a friend, that I will be forever grateful for. She said she’d heard how sick I was and asked had I considered Lyme disease? I was similar to a girl she knew who had it. This was my turning point. I got tested here in Ireland in Dec but came back negative. My GP suggested tests in Germany which we sent in January and a few days later I finally had answers and a consultant who was willing to take me on and help me. I wasn’t naive, I had been researching Lymes since that phone call and learned it was a controversial diagnosis and one that I would have to pay for privately to treat but I had no choice. I started treatment in February and every day I’m getting stronger and healing more. I’m back spending time with my babies and doing regular mammy things, I’m back doing some work and at meetings and taking pride in my life. I still have to take it day by day and some days are still very hard but it’s early days for me yet and I’ve no doubt I will continue to heal and get my life back. I’ve let go of the guilt and anger, I trust science and my consultant. I listen to my body and let it lead the way. I’m taking my life back!
