Late stage Lymie

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I must have been bitten in the spring 0f 2014, but I never saw the tick or the bulls eye rash. The first symptoms I noticed in the fall were irritability and then a complete inability to sleep for more than ten minutes at a time, no matter what medication I took or how completely exhausted I was (I took days of work to catch up on sleep but couldn't sleep anyway). I couldn't function. I lost 20+ pounds in less than three months and was tsted for thyroid problems. I even went on a hormonal patch thinking it might be menoopause. I was told that my white blood cell count was normal, it wasn't cancer, so I shouldn't worry too much. But I knew something was really wrong. I kept losing weight and every part of my body hurt.

That winter, my joints and limbs hurt every day, but I live in New England and was hoveling snow every day, so I didn't think much of it. In spring when Iplanted my first vegetables, I thought my knees were creaky because I had turned 50. But when I lost 3/4 of the vision in my left eyr in May due to a retina collapse, I started wondering if someone, somewhere had a voodoo doll that looked just like me.

In summer of 2015, after retinal surgery, my left knee blew up. It hurt so much even when I wasn't mving I would like in bed and cry. It was drained and I got a cortisone shot. Weeks later it blew up again and my whole leg was swollen like an elephant's. I had MRIs and was sent to an orthopedist, who drained the 15cm cyst on my calf and said he had never seen anything like it. More MRIs were ordered but when my right knee blew up, I called the ortho and he agreed that it wasn't a meniscus tear. He ordered blood tests for four things, one of which was Lyme, and I thought that was the least likely. But I "lit up" all ten blots on the Western Blot test. I had Lyme and quite the spirochete colony living inside me. I was grateful and relieved and took my first for weeks of doxy; an Infectious Disease specialist put me on 6 more weeks.

Now I still have joint pain (wrists, shoulders, knee) but the fog from antibiotics has lifted and I can often actually make it through a day without needing to sleep in the afternoon. Here's hoping that my immune system figures out that it can stop attacking my own joints some time soon.