Tag: lyme

 Lyme. A four letter word for a cluster of tick borne diseases, with the syphilis like borrelia at the heart of the disorder.

  One of the more annoying mis-features of having this thing is dysautonomia, and it’s got me good this morning.

    As a young man I read Stephen R. Donaldson’s Thomas Convenent series. Convenant, a leprosy victim, experiences brief, periodic meetings with a character he refers to as the harbinger. These events always presage his transition from an ill, socially isolated man in the mundane world into a healthy anti-hero catapulted into The Land, a place of magic and mystery.

   I’ve seen these creatures in my own life; the shapes of men, silent and strange. The harbinger, he’s an outsider’s outsider, alone on the path, even when in a crowd.

  I encountered another one today and the experience has left me a bit shaken.

 I got a new doctor at the end of September and in 72 hours flat I was ready to go back to work full time. I’m thrilled by that, but I am still dangerously sick, so much so that a small mistake can tip me from seemingly normal into a dangerous place where I am physically and mentally disinclined to care for myself.

   I have a regimen of several antibiotics which change about once a month. I fumbled the switchover mid February, losing a big chunk of Valentines day. I’m writing this after a three day antibiotic break to see how I feel, having just started a mixture of clarithromycin and plaquenil moments ago.

 So … here’s a peak into what life is like with chronic Lyme. And a deeper look at what it could mean for health care reform.