A little coconutty with this Lyme

This blog will be two things: a way for friends and family to be updated about my journey (and treatments) with chronic lyme disease and also a vehicle to bring awareness to chronic lyme disease in general. Mine is not the first blog to do this. You can search and find many others.

This blog will hopefully be a little nutty (hence the coconuts) because the stress this illness has caused is mountainous and sometimes you just have to laugh.

(true)

The blog might be quite serious at times as having a chronic illness is often very lonely and depressing.

I will speak of my faith in God and the fact that He is bigger than any tick or spirochete in this universe. No matter how discouraged I become, my foundation in Jesus Christ remains my focal point and the Rock I go to when I have no where else to go. I would not still be here if it weren’t for my faith. So an upfront admission – I will talk of God. I will dialogue about God if anyone messages me. I will not debate about God because I just don’t have the energy in me. I need to reserve that energy to get through my days. My hope is that despite all the pain and difficulties of a chronic illness, I can show that, no matter what, my hope is in the Lord.

“When I am afraid I put my trust in You.

In God – whose word I praise.

In God – I put my trust.

I will not be afraid.

What can flesh do to me?” ~ Psalm 56:3-4

So, with that, on with the blog description:

There’s a not-so-fun party going on inside my body that affects every part of my day. Being a writer, it’s interesting to see how it takes over different aspects of my life. It is common, when one feels out of control, to do something to make you feel in control – and because I am feeling like my health has been out of control for years now, I am doing the only thing I know how to do – write about it.

But I’m not just writing it in my journal. My handwriting has become so illegible that I can’t even read it. I want to start this blog because that is one of the best vehicles I’ve found for public awareness of an issue and if there’s ever an issue that needs attention it’s chronic lyme.

The public awareness I wish to raise isn’t necessarily for my own situation, but for the millions of people out there who are suffering both knowingly and unknowingly with this hideous disease. There is much controversy and politics that go into whether chronic lyme is considered a disease at all, how to treat it, where to go, who to look to. It’s all very suspenseful-movie-of-the-night-ish when, really, we are talking about human lives where they are not actors who can go home to their healthy lives. I want the plight of those with chronic lyme to be known. As do many others.

Because I am fundraising for the cost of my future medical treatment, I am using this blog as a way to update friends and family who wish to know my progress. My updates were becoming a bit long so I wanted to give donors the option of hearing the good, the bad, and the ugly. Or the good, bad, and amazing. I’m sure things will fluctuate.

For now, it’s enough to say that I’m sick; I’ve been sick, and I’m tired of being sick. After many years of being sick, I finally found people who will help me; I’ve finally found names to put to these weird symptoms, and I’ve finally found a community of people who understand. I also have more support from people than I ever realized, as evidence by my GoFundMe campaign.

I conclude this inaugural entry by saying that I have had to edit this multiple times to fix errors; it took a good hour to write a few paragraphs, whereas a typical blog entry of this type takes me 15 minutes.

I am going to be the writer I once was. That was a gift the Lord gave me and what He starts He brings to completion.

–Lymie out*…

* those with chronic lyme disease affectionately call themselves and each other “lymies”