Spiritual Article and Free Lyme Test!

I recently came across an article entitled "Chronic Lyme Disease - Metaphysical and Spiritual Aspects" which explores an interesting theory I've developed through my own personal experiences with fellow Lymies over the last two years.

In her article, the author writes, "Chronic or late-stage Lyme Disease tends to affect people who have big things to offer the world. These people may already seem to be 'on their path' and often excel in multiple areas at once, including the healing arts. The illness seems to appear in people who could go even deeper with their healing and creative gifts but for one reason or another feel locked into their current lifestyle."

I have found the above to be true for every Lymie I know, including likely Lymies who haven't been tested. After meeting dozens upon dozens of chronically ill folk online and at in-person Lyme support groups and other communal/spiritual events, an obvious type of person kept appearing in front of me.

The auther continues, "Lyme patient patterns include: brighter than average in both intelligence and spirit, healing gifts that need even more expression than currently allowed, highly creative, and usually highly energetic prior to the Lyme fatigue."

Yes! But why? Why do the overwhelming majority of Lymies possess the qualities of above-average intelligence and creativity? I've been trying to come up with an answer to this for months.

As somewhat of a Myers Briggs Personality Type buff, I noticed early on that there are proportionally far more "NF" (intuitive feeler) types with chronic Lyme than in the general population. Then I heard from a chiropractor that right-brained dominance (creativity and emotion) goes hand in hand with chronic illness such as anxiety, depression and fatigue. According to him, a nervous system imbalance is responsible for this, and people can do left-brain dominating exercises (in the Myers Briggs world, left-brained people are considered "ST" or sensing thinker types) to try to balance our nervous systems and, in turn, heal our illnesses.

Some believe that people who are born with creative and sensitive qualities attract illness during their lives, while others feel the illness comes first and alters our brains, making us more creative and sensitive.

It's a topic that fascinates me.

For anyone who hasn't been able to afford a Lyme-literate doctor or the costly yet unreliable blood tests that diagnose Lyme, a new, possibly more reliable Lyme test is now available. It's a culture that takes days to actually grow the Lyme bacteria instead of looking for antibodies, and it's available for free right now. You do need a doctor to sign off on the kit — which is valued at $600 — but anybody with clinical symptoms of Lyme is eligible.

Info about the free culture test can be found here.

The Two-Year Mark

Happy New Year!

It's hard to believe it's been two years since I was diagnosed with Lyme and company — two years since my perpetual hodgepodge of mystifying symptoms was validated, recognized, affirmed, and my dishonorable labels as "that girl who just wants attention" and "that hypochondriac" got stripped off me like a giant Band-Aid in the biggest "aha" moment of my life.

I'm gonna keep this entry short. As usual, I'm exploring some new treatments — let's face it, in spite all the confusion and misdirection in the Lyme treatment world, one thing we have going for us is a seemingly never-ending array of options from which to choose. Even those who feel like they've tried everything only need to look a little harder to see just how many healing modalities they have not yet tried.

So I'll be back (hopefully soon) to update you on that. It's a bit early to get into it at this point.

It's definitely been a harder couple of years than I ever anticipated — partly due to the terrible herxes, but also as a result of some pretty hardcore frustration. Everywhere I turned, I felt incredibly frustrated, whether from the up-and-down Yo-Yo effect (otherwise lovingly referred to as the "false alarm that I'm finally getting better!!!!!!!!!") or the plateaus in between those periods of up and down, in which I made little progress at all.

Over the last two years, I've learned that there are no fast cures for late-stage Lyme disease. If you try to imagine the most complicated puzzle you can think of, well, Lyme disease is probably twice as complicated as that. Or three times. Or fifty.

Another big challenge I faced was figuring out how to explain to people that I haven't been letting my illness win, just because — by all outward appearances — I've taken such interest in it. There is a big difference between letting one's illness own them and trying to educate oneself on something for the exact opposite purpose — to not let it own us.

I've also learned that most doctors are completely unfamiliar with chronic Lyme, to the point where they not only don't comprehend it but they outright deny it, in spite of the mounting (and boy do I mean mounting!) evidence to the contrary.

I'll be back with a lot more soon!