The Roller Coaster of Lyme Disease

This article was first published on the Global Lyme Alliance blog on July 17th, 2017. Most of the links on this post are informational, but a few are affiliate links to help maintain this website. 

The MRI results were sitting in my email inbox a week before my doctor's appointment. I couldn't bring myself to look at them. Too much was riding on it. As a complication of Lyme disease, I have an infection in my spine, which no antibiotics seem to touch. It's  been almost three years since it was discovered and no doctors can find a solution. Six months earlier, though, I started a new antibiotic and my doctor thought this was "the one." I didn't want to learn it was just another failure.

As soon as my doctor came into the room I knew my MRI results weren't good. He had a serious look on his face, in sharp contrast to his usual jolly demeanor. I listened while he told me there was no change in the results and that maybe it was time to consider a more aggressive treatment. Getting this news was like being at the top of the highest peak on a roller coaster and then plummeting suddenly to its lowest point. I felt the same queasiness in the pit of my stomach, but it wasn't a thrill. All the hope I'd built up, only left me disappointed.

I officially got on what I refer to as the roller coaster of Lyme in January of 2016, but like most Lyme patients I'd been on a health roller coaster most of my life. The ups and downs have been unrelenting. There are the short-term ups and downs of daily life, like when you have a good day immediately followed by one where you can't get out of bed. And there are the long-term ups and downs of treatment. I start to make progress and then have a huge setback, like the one I had last month when I got the results of my MRI.
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As Lyme patients, we try to make sense of the ride. We wonder if a peak or valley is due to a new medication, changes in seasons, or our hormone cycles. All these things do have an impact, but then there are times where there is no reason at all. Those are some of the lowest lows, because we don't know what to do, lost with no answers and no momentum to get back up the hill.

With chronic illness, the jarring ups and downs take an emotional toll. We stop trusting our progress and are always waiting for the other shoe to drop, because, unfortunately sometimes it does. Imagine feeling the best you've felt in months, only to have a new symptom crop up out of nowhere. You stop trusting your good days, which can turn so quickly into bad days. There isn't a day when you just feel at peace. This is why the question, "How are you feeling?", has been such a hard question for Lyme patients to answer. I always feel like I'm lying, because people usually only see me on my good days, when I’m more likely to say I'm feeling well. On my bad days, I don't leave the house.

To date, the roller coaster's the best metaphor I've found to describe what it's like to live with Lyme. It's not an illness where you have steady forward progress, instead you go up and down, hopefully trending upward in the long run.

Despite being knocked down time after time, I choose to live in a state of hope, rather than despair. Why do I continue to hope even though it's been three years with no change on my MRI? Because I have a choice. It's the one thing I have control over in this illness. I can choose despair, or I can choose to keep up the fight. I think hope is the better option. Some people say if you build your hopes up, you risk more disappointment. I don't think that's true. I’m going to be disappointed either way on this roller coaster, and I'd rather live my daily life in a state of hope and positivity rather than being guarded and cautious. For me, hope is the better option.

Yesterday was a bad day, today was a good day. Who knows what will happen tomorrow, but one day the roller coaster will come to an end. My goal is remission, and when I finally reach it all the ups and downs will have been worth the ride.
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"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill