Thankful for the Pain

In All Things
I praise God for my life and the contents of it. I praise God for my life. I praise God for this unique opportunity to learn that is unlike no other, that we here on earth call Lyme disease. I thank my heavenly Father for my body, even though my body and I often have different dreams and aspirations for the day ahead. We tend to be polar opposites in fact, I would love to go on an adventure or go out with some friends. Or even tackle a long list of cleaning chores I would love to accomplish to declutter my drawers and closet. My body prefers to...how should I say it...use its louder voice, and tell me to tighten the reigns on some of these aspirations instead. I still fight it, I may want to organize my dresser or my nightstand and end up doing only 1 drawer. In my mind I still won, just don't tell my body that.

I praise Him who has given me the ability of communication. He has given me a gift in understanding others and relating to their circumstances better. I know He has allowed me to touch many other lives throughout my journey and helped me to be able to ease the pain of others. Even when I am hurting and suffering deep down inside. It all happens for a reason, something positive will happen through all of this.

I am thankful for my perseverance. As long as I am alive I can fight. As long as I am alive I can reach for more goals and help other people. Thanks to this blog I may even be able to touch people decades after I am gone, who knows. I often wish I wasn't alive. I even pray for it sometimes. Sometimes I pray for it all of the time. Truth is I am still here and deep down I know I am going to be walking this earth for a while now. I just wish to end the suffering and the seemingly endless search for a solution. Some days I am just so tired that I cannot get anything accomplished and unfortunately I live on the worlds time table of deadlines that must be met, not everything can be left for tomorrow. I am thankful for my time management skills, which have allowed me to juggle sick days and busy days so that I can hit my deadlines or even beat them. In all honesty, if I could not manage my time there is NO way I would be able to be a student and work. I could manage one or the other I believe, but it would be a less pleasant environment filled with stress.

I am ever so thankful for my medical team. I have a local doctor who is familiar with my case and is always willing to run tests or give me a referral if need be. She also provides me with infusions of nutrients to strengthen my body. In between visits to the clinic, she helps keep me going. AND because she takes insurance she has made blood tests much more affordable.
My Kansas clinic has taken me a long long way through fighting disease ands strengthening my body. I often wonder why I have been such a difficult case and have had such relapses that end in my growing frustration. They do great work, I believe my doctor is one of the best. Due to some sort of changes in my doctors life he has changed clinics, so next time I return to Kansas it most likely will not be to the Hansa Center, it will be to the new clinic my doctor is working at. I am ok with this change, I just do not know what tp expect in my future as far as how treatment will go. Im sure it will be similar, maybe even a step up who knows.

I am so thankful for some very special people in my life. Here lately I do not think I have gone more than a post without mentioning my best friend, he has been such an inspiration to keep me going. Some of my coworkers also mean the world to me and I look forward to seeing them every day. Plus several other great friends of mine, one girl, she's probably my best girl friend, is there for about anything I need and she gets it. She's been through plenty of traumatic things in her life that she understands what its like to be alone and miserable. Theres several more friends that I see on a frequent basis that I cannot imagine living without, I have some good people in my life.

Last of all, for this post anyway 'cause I gotta get to bed, I am thankful for all of the pain I have been through. Without pain I wouldn't understand what "good" is. I could not possibly fathom what life would be like if I had never learned the meaning of miserable and depression. I would have never learned to appreciate the good times if I had never spent days and weeks crying until there were no tears left to cry. I would not know what living on the edge of collapse actually meant, and I certainly wouldn't understand the importance of treating my body like a temple. I watch all my friends eat synthetic junk food and I know what its doing to their body, I am not perfect when it comes to eating healthy but I do treat my body pretty darn well in my opinion! No twinkies or pizza rolls are going into this body, nooooooo.
I would have no gauge for the light if I had never seen the dark, if this is the dark I am still living through I know I must have one bright light ahead of me :)

Those are my two feet. I will stand on them.

I hope you all have had a great thanksgiving week! During this season we get time to spend with friends and family. It’s a shame that we have to wait for a holiday to be around our friends and family, but that just makes it all the more special.

I have had a better week this week which I am glad to report. I like to say something positive every so often, I hate feeling so negative all the time. I do not like negativity one bit. That’s something that I miss the most, being positive and looking forward. Hard days have only gotten harder. Fear has only dug deeper. Fear...fear has grown in me in more ways than I ever knew possible. I always have had faith that I will be okay one day, whether it be that I live a healthy life on earth or in heaven. Suffering isn’t forever and I have never doubted that. 

What I have learned is how many different types of mental suffering one could experience-all at once.  I have become so afraid of others judgement and opinions, I have become so paranoid of everything around every corner, paranoid that my friends are just being sympathetic towards my cause and they are just temporary, and most of all afraid that I will never get “me” back in one piece. I don’t like the idea of never exactly being myself again, I know that my body will be healthy again but I do fear that I will have “battle scars” I guess you could say. I used to feel like being sick had built me up in many ways. I have lost this feeling, I am sad to say. I feel like the events of this year have turned me bitter and pathetic. 

I don’t know where all of these thoughts came from. I don’t know when they started. I know I never purposely welcomed them in, but maybe I did by accident ? Sometimes I wish I did have a twin, someone right beside me every minute of the day who knew what I was supposed to be like and could see when something was turning south. I used to catch it, like oh no this ain’t right I need to be working on these thoughts and these emotions. Something broke in me and I lost that too. I lost my personal monitor for keeping up with what’s running through me. Seeing as I am a chronic insomniac I spend a significant amount of time awake at night thinking(I know that’s the worst time to think). Seeing as I sleep alone also means that all this thinking that leads to my fears and rampant emotions means no one is around to see that I am torturing myself by accident. My quiet time at night used to be spent reading and calming my mind. Oftentimes my reading would be other Lyme blogs, those are always so encouraging to read. Well, brain fog said no to reading for about the last eight months. So my quiet relaxing time has diminished and anxiety moved right on in and took its place. If anxiety had a face it’d be a smiling, greedy little devil. It just showed up one day and started stirring the trouble that it causes-also unwelcomed. 

This week I have tried to get back to calming my brain down a bit. Since I started skipping some of my meds every day my brain is starting to allow reading again. While this window of opportunity is open, I’m getting back to reading some old blogs that have traditionally been encouraging. So the one I’ve been flipping through is Ticks and Trust by Shannon Goertzen. Yesterday I sent this post to several friends of mine, who I share Lyme things with. It was recieved well, as you can imagine with fear and anxiety being an issue sharing personal things is something that I am wary about. The post just explains so well what I am feeling and what everyone with chronic Lyme probably feels. I can’t not share it, it’d be a disservice. Reading through Shannon’s blog has certainly helped me to gain some of my confidence back. It’s reminded me that I’m not just hurting and suffering, I’m fighting and digging in my heels. I may be out of sorts constantly, in pain, and foggy but I am fighting and I am winning. 

I am still here am I not?? I don’t have any reason to not be here anymore. This disease isn’t going to kill me, it doesn’t have my permsion to do that. I am not in that bad of shape, my brain isn’t itself whatsoever and my body is right behind it. I still work and I still go to school, I have never had to call in sick to work. Never. So I can’t be doing that bad. At least physically. 

I just have to keep digging in my heels and reminding myself of the things I have to be thankful for. When I first started going south earlier this year I quickly became thankful for what I had. This time of year, however, everyone is talking about what they are thankful for and that does my dusty mind some good at being grateful. It gives me excuses to tell people why I’m thankful and it also inspires me of what I have to be thankful for that I may not have noticed. Something else that comes with this season is time off from work and school that I can spend with my family and friends. So I have something new to be thankful for right now. My friends are my number 1 support system, they get me through the worst of days whether they even know it’s a bad day or not. Usually all that’s visible is how much I talk out loud, the worse I feel the quieter I am. Other than that it’s not always very visible that I’m floating south. 

I can say this also, since I started to rethink my school decisions for next year my depression has disappeared. Last week I decided maybe I should follow my best friend to school next year, him d I have talked about it and he seems to love the idea. Allowing myself to even think about going off to school and unleashing myself from the teather that Lyme has kept me on has been very freeing. I’d be with my best friend so I should be safe, he’s been with me sick before. Even so, by the time I would be leaving for school next year I should be out of this funk. Some of the stress that has been a contributing factor to the severity of my health decline is gone and will stay gone. So now I am in a recovery period of sorts. Stress isn’t what put me in decline, or at least as a whole. But it’s been a major contribution I believe. 

Naturally, thinking about following my friend and going off to school has sparked a couple dozen fears about the situation. #1 being that I am only going off to school because people will think I can’t let go of my friend. The school in question was actually my goal way back when I thought I would be  100% healthy when I entered college. So it would be like going back to an old dream, opening a box that I thought had long been closed and locked. Now the box has been opened and this time I have a best friend to go with it, I didn’t when this was my original plan. Actually I wouldn’t have ever met him most likely if I left for this school my first year of college. 

So I am trying to use these thoughts to encourage myself, if this is meant to be, that I am making a good choice. 

Like I said, since I started playing around with this my depression disappeared. Remnants still poke around, but I haven’t had any for real depression since. That was more than a week ago now. 

Fears of being judged are at an all time high but this too shall pass. I figured all I can do right now is apply to the school and wait. Either I’ll get in or a I won’t and that’ll be that.

I just keep on praying. I am praying for guidance and healing. I am praying for others that are suffering(Rebekah Miller and the Goertzen family among those), I am praying for my uninvited house guests-depression, anxiety, fear, and sadness to be banished without a trace
I have faith that all of these prayers will be answered, I don’t know how or when they will be answered. If I did I guess that would be a wish, not a prayer. I’m not much into the wishing business...now that’s something I don’t have faith in.

I am also praying that this week has inspired thankfulness to be in your heart this week. I have found many things to be thankful for that my issues have prevented me from seeing. Being around others of a like mind tends to make the old wheels turn and new thoughts appear!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!! I did, I wasn't too symptomatic and I did a little more than take up space on the couch. Not much more, but more lol

I knew I was going to be loading on the junk food today, so yesterday I made sure I drank plenty of homemade juice and smoothies, I call it pre-detoxing. I wasn't too bad, but I'm sure I will be feeling the sugar load tomorrow...
Do you guys do this? I don't know how much merit it has, but extra nutrients will hopefully keep me ahead for when I eat junk. Just a thought

Recently I started reading this blog, It is written by a Canadian mother of three who struggles with lyme disease and babesia. She has had to travel from Canada to San Francisco for treatment. She has been writing this blog since 2007. I started reading it last week, starting at post #1. I am up to 2009, hoping to read another year of posts tonight. I usually wait to share a blog until I am totally up to date, but I just had to share it :) This woman is hysterical, even though she is obviously struggling and suffering she has something funny to say about it. That's great, I always try to find the bright side and make a joke, but it can be hard. Props to Shannon!!

Since it is Thanksgiving, I guess its a good idea to reflect on just a few things I am thankful for-
Being as healthy as I am, it could be worse
Finding an LLMD I am comfortable with and I trust, even though I haven't been yet
I have great friends I can talk to if I ever have an extra lymey day, online and in person
A great family
and of course this blog, which gives me a place to vent and hopefully provide some sort of benefit for someone else


Happy Thanksgiving!! Watch out for black Friday tomorrow, I have a feeling a few people will be making the news just because they wanted something $5 off.. .