This is a VITALITY illness

This picture? This is what vitality looks like.

Google images of vitality.

If you are sick with Lyme, or have been sick with Lyme, these images might tear you up inside.

Because Lyme Disease leaves NO ROOM for vitality. Instead you must function from a place of SURVIVAL.

There we go. This looks more like it.

This is Lyme Disease.

Where every step you take is hard,

and every goal you used to have is up for question.

It was my cardiologist who first coined the term, "vitality illness" to me.

He was the first doctor I saw when I began to plummet from my former perch of LIVING BIG.

He could not find anything wrong with my heart, per se.

My blood pressure was lower than normal, yes. I was feeling faint a good bit of the time, yes. Certainly breaking out in cold sweats and unable to stay upright for more than twenty minutes at a time, yes.

He looked at me, with the saddest of eyes, compassion etched on his forehead,

"My dear... I think you have a vitality illness."

Boy, did he nail that one.

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It has been two years since he diagnosed me with an unknown vitality illness.

In these last two years I have descended into the bleakest of days. Choked by the dark night of my soul for months at a time.

And then, against all odds, I have also been lifted by the softest, brightest clouds of hope on other days.

A brutal sixty day treatment protocol in the summer of 2021 put the fire out in my brain. I spent four months afterwards, patiently waiting for the smoke to clear.

And it did.

Symptoms cleared, in reverse chronological order from the way they had appeared.

It is called RETRACING.

An Indian doctor in the memoir, "This is How I Save My Life" described it best, to a Lyme patient. It only occurs when the CAUSE of an illness is addressed.

September 1, 2021 I had my last involuntary muscle jerk.

Christmas day, 2021 I had my last migraine.

On June 20, 2022 I went on my first hike up a mountain in YEARS.

FOR REAL. I hiked.

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This is me today.

I am this tiny weed, patiently gathering sunshine and nutrients from whatever little bit of world I find myself in.

It is not easy.

I contracted COVID for the first time 9 days ago.

The resulting PTSD from the headaches, fatigue and nausea threaten to pull me back under. They remind me of my LYME LIFE.

Of my limitations.

Of my immune system's struggle to keep up.

I will find recovery again.

In my own time.

The world will continue to spin.

The sun will shine.

The cracks will let light in.