Do you remember the tick bite?
The one you got 33 years ago?
The one that forever changed your life?
Were you hiking in Connecticut?
Or at home in North Carolina?
Were you camping in British Columbia?
Or did it happen much earlier –
When you worked in New Hampshire?
Do you remember the tick bite?
The one that forever changed your life?
I don’t remember the tick bite.
But I do remember sleeping for 48 hours straight.
And I remember that first diagnosis:
Strep throat.
Except it wasn’t. The culture was wrong.
So we tried a different antibiotic.
And the throat improved.
But the fatigue did not.
Christmas and New Year’s were a blur.
As were most of January, February, and March.
In April I took the dog for my first walk.
Three houses down and back!
And the next day, a little further.
Walking every day helped.
In May I flew to Canada to be with mom and dad.
I remember the terrible headaches and earaches.
Nothing got rid of the pain.
(Codeine took the edge off.)
I remember walking the dog every day.
And I slowly improved.
In November I returned to North Carolina.
And tried to go back to school.
It lasted less than a week.
And I was back in bed.
Another Christmas. Another New Year’s.
In January I started working –
Ten hours each week.
By April I had switched jobs –
Twenty hours, and then thirty.
Some semblance of normalcy.
In October I had a tonsillectomy.
I woke up from surgery and
For the first time in more than a year
I didn’t have a sore throat!
Life became “normal”.
Walk every day.
Get 8 or 9 hours of sleep.
Avoid stress.
Mess this up and you’ll land in bed
For a day – or a week.
Normal enough to go to graduate school
And start teaching.
Of course there were cycles.
Seasons of severe painful arthritis:
I struggled to walk up a flight of stairs.
Seasons of headaches – always headaches.
And months with a droopy eyelid.
And fatigue – the never-ending cycle of fatigue.
Years passed.
I could manage these symptoms.
Bedtime at 9:30.
Walk every day.
Summers off to recover.
Sixteen years ago things fell apart.
Climbing stairs became daunting –
Painful joints and no energy.
Horrible stomach cramps.
I struggled to teach –
Missing so many days!
The gastroenterologist sent me to
The hematologist sent me to
The oncologist sent me to
The rheumatologist sent me to
The _______ologist sent me to
Nowhere.
“Let’s send you back to the gastroenterologist.”
I finally saw a pediatrician in Chapel Hill;
He practiced holistic medicine.
He looked at all the test results:
“Let’s try a gluten-free diet.”
Within a week I felt better than I had
In twenty years!
My joints only flared up when I ate gluten.
My stomach quit hurting.
The headaches became manageable.
Life became “normal” again.
Walk every day.
Get 8 or 9 hours of sleep.
Avoid stress.
Eat well.
Mess this up and you’ll land in bed
For a day – or a week.
Normal enough to go to graduate school
And become a pastor.
Still the symptoms popped up:
Seasons of extreme fatigue.
Driving on Mebane Oaks
And blacking out.
Seasons of headaches.
The heart attack that wasn’t
A heart attack –
But there are heart issues.
The vertigo – the months of vertigo –
Nothing normal about my vertigo!
The stress of the past four years
Has had a cumulative effect:
Craig died suddenly
And Dad had a stroke
Changing everything.
The Methodist Church is divided –
Talk about breaking my heart!
The country is in disarray –
And the persistent anxiety is real.
And then Ruth died.
And then the Pandemic hit.
And then George Floyd was suffocated.
And then the final straw –
Jim had sepsis.
My primary care doctor would have
Checked thyroid and B12 again.
The Integrative Medical Clinic
Ran batteries of tests:
Positive for Lyme disease.
Positive for Babesia – whatever that is!
Low Vitamin D – how is that?
Ridiculously high Epstein Barr titer.
And so a new journey begins:
But why didn’t anyone catch this
33 years ago?
