My New Year (February) Resolution.....

I will write more! I started this blog as my final journey "out of the lyme light".  I guess it is a lesson to everyone, and especially to me, that perhaps that is never as simple and straightforward as we think it's going to be.  Why should it be really?  The whole course of treatment - never mind the illness - has been two steps forward and one step back, so the final uphill battle is not going to be any easier!


I didn't, of course, expect to break my shoulder and have to add that in to the mix.  That is life reminding me (as if I really needed reminding) that shit happens. So, while I am still battling those most stubborn little spirochete buggers, I am left doing it one armed!


In all seriousness, this has complicated things.  I am more tired again. Pain is exhausting. I am back to relying on other people to do things for me and that is so frustrating in so many ways. Although it is because of a different injury, it is so difficult not to associate it with going backwards health-wise, in general.


 Stopping my antibiotics was planned for December and Dr S said we should go ahead as planned... see how it goes.  So I did.  It took about three weeks for the symptoms to creep back up on me - an improvement from the last time I tried to stop them when the Lyme symptoms hit me full force in about two days!  But after the giant hands returned to squeeze my brain inside my skull and I slept 17 hours one day, it seemed pretty obvious that now was not the time to stop them - I was not doing very well.  The day I realised I was going to have to go back on the antibiotics, for an indefinite period of time, I cried.  Mainly because it has now been seven years of being ill and I was really hoping I would be able to stop them and move on...... symbolically.  But after thinking about it, this is fine by me. Really. When I look back over those seven years I was SO very ill and I have made such huge improvements.    And if I have to take an antibiotic once a day it's really not the end of the world.  I'd much rather get the benefits from that than suffer the alternative.


Anyway, I plan to stick to my new year's resolution.  I have lots to write about - my shoulder injury, possible surgery in Kentucky USA; my Lyme doctor in the UK being called up before the GMC and no longer running his clinic (I only found out about this last week, I am shocked and saddened that Lyme in the UK is following the exact same path that Lyme in the US has done, several years later); various recent Lyme-related articles in UK mainstream media - the information isn't exactly great, but at least the word is beginning to get out there. So.... lots going on this year and hopefully lots going on in Lyme-world in the UK this year that will really help bring Lyme the attention it needs to that sufferers get the treatment and support they desperately require.


So.... a favourite quotation for a new year:

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

        

            ~ Albert Einstein