A Day In The Life Of Lyme

The last few days and weeks, have been horrible. I usually wake up with acid in the back of my throat which means I don’t have much time to get to the toilet or a bucket before I throw up. If I’m lucky, I have time to take a fast acting nausea wafer. Even if that works, it doesn’t stop the stomach pain. My stomach muscles hurt from always contacting, and nothing helps stop that. I also wake up drenched in sweat. Every doctor I have seen knows I’m sick just by my constant fever and sweating. My body is trying hard to kill the bacteria with heat but it’s not working. This often turns into sweating with chills and severe shaking. The shaking also comes with large body jerks that feel like an electric current has been sent through my body. Then there is widespread body pain. The pain ranges widely including deep aching bone pain, throbbing muscle and tendon pain, and a burning skin sensation. There’s also headaches, teeth/jaw pain, painful muscle spasms and widespread weakness that leads to collapsing. Every part of my body is affected. My ears have ringing, my nose is overly sensitive to smell and my eyes are often too blurry to read. My whole body feels like it weighs a tonne and that my chest in particular has got bricks sitting on it, making it hard to breathe. Even if I can breathe enough, the feeling of suffocating, commonly known as air hunger, is really distressing. 

The physical symptoms only scratch the surface on bad days. I used to consider myself to be smart but now I can barely put a sentence together. I forget even the most basic words and often don’t pronounce things correctly even though I know how to. Thinking alone, is extremely hard. All thoughts and memories feel like they’re behind a thick fog and the harder I try to get to them, the further away they get.

Then there’s the emotional symptoms. My bad days consist of cycling through depression, anxiety and irritability. The hardest part is that I’m aware that I don’t feel like myself but I can’t change the feelings and reactions to people. When I’m like this I try to stay off social media because I can accidentally get angry at people, but most of my support is online, so it can be a catch 22. 

A Day In The Life Of Lyme Disease

Things not to say to someone who is sick source

Further reading if you want to know more:
My original Lyme post:
Lyme and Loss
More Posts from me:
Worldwide Lyme Protests
Lyme/Bartonella Awareness Nails
Thank You For Understanding
Other blogs:
Inside The Mind Of A Person With Chronic Lyme Disease