It seems like most people are relived when they find out they have Lyme Disease. I was some relieved, to finally have an explanation for everything, but I have also been diagnosed with a patulous eustacian tube, which is not being treated. (yet) I don't know which symptoms come from what.
When I drive and the altitude change sets my ear popping and increases the feeling of pressure in my head, I wonder if Lyme has anything to do with that.
Tonight is probably the first night I am really discouraged, after having these 2 new diagnosis. Actually, it is probably only the 3rd or so time I've felt discouraged during this whole 9-month ordeal. (I don't get discouraged easily.)
I am nearly 2 weeks into treatment of the Lyme Disease. For the first few days I was fine. Then the next day I didn't feel quite like my usual "somewhat-sick" self. (With an earplug, noise-reduction headset when needed, and super vitamins, I was half-way coping with the lyme disease already, though it did change my life dramatically on a continuing, daily basis.) I felt a little worse this day, but not much.
The second day found me pretty much stuck on the couch, laying down.
I was glad to not be in bed, but it was scary not knowing how long this would last. It was the "herxeimer reaction" my Dr. had warned me about. The medicine was working, killing off lyme spirochette's, and this was my body's response to that. It got worse, before getting better, as usually happens.
Thankfully, what could have lasted for weeks only lasted for 3 days.
At the same time I got so dizzy, I also lost my mind. I had struggled the entire time with collecting my thoughts enough to talk, slurring my speech, swapping words around, etc, but this was different. This was like I had gone senile overnight. When the incredible dizziness lifted (so that I was just "sick" and moderately affected, not severely affected from this dreadful illness), I thought, "I can handle the mental problems, because at least I can walk again!"
But here I am, not knowing how to continue with the state my mind is in.
Do you ever have those moments where you go into another room to do something, and can't remember what it was you went out to do? Well, that is now my life, 100% of the time. It doesn't matter whether I'm talking to someone (trying to hold my thoughts together well enough to hold a conversation) or working on the computer (my job that we depend on for all of our income!)... whatever I am doing, I loose my train of thought. I have to continually stop and thinking about what it was I intended to do or say, and pick up the pieces and stumble on.
Printing labels, answering emails, making phone calls, paying bills... everything is painstaking to accomplish in the state my mind is in. Even understanding the Sunday School lesson, or participating in Bible Study or praying out loud... communicating with the cashier enough to get out of the store without appearing like a lunatic... everything I do is now VERY hard.
Today I had to put up about 120 puzzles, in order according to item number. WHOA. Talk about overload for a brain that doesn't work! Looking at the list, I KNOW (because I still feel like I am Jennifer Vick on the inside) that it is NOT a hard task. But if I had counted the number of times I had to stop, look at the same numbers/item titles over again, and re-think the simple order of what I had already gone over in my head AGAIN, it would have been painful.
If I do find myself stopped in the middle of 2 thoughts, I can't even remember where I am at to pick them up and move on.
I have learned to rely on written notes and physical reminders. When I get lost in the middle of an order, I go back to the invoice, figure out where I left off, and go from there. (repeat, repeat, repeat.)
This is why I am so discouraged tonight. Like I said, I still FEEL like I am "me", but my brain is not responding like I am used to. It is like I really have lost my mind, and it is so frustrating because there are no real answers as to what to expect. I am guaranteed nothing. I don't even know for sure that this mental inability is part of the herxeimer reaction. If it is, I can expect it to improve at least back to where it was with just slurred speech, etc within a few weeks. This is what I am hoping, but then the thought of a few weeks of this is just staggering. How can I endure it?
But, this is where God's word answers my questions.
II Corinthians 4:16-18 says:
"For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which
are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the
things which are not seen are eternal."
The words that God used to speak to me in these verses about how awful I feel, mentally, are these words: "light affliction", "but for a moment", "temporal", and "eternal". My mental inability, even if it were to last the rest of my life, is a "light affliction" that is "but for a moment" when compared to eternity. The "eternal" treasures that God has given me in Christ Jesus is more than can compare to any "temporal" complaint.
I don't "like" what is going on, but just like in any other thing, I can not "cling" to what God has not given me today, demanding that before declaring myself content with life. God has not given me a mind that can think clearly right now, and I need to be content with what he has given me.
"So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:33) In other words, though a "sound mind" IS (by all standards) a "good thing", I can not cling to that as necessary to life. I must cling to Jesus only, all else is nothing.
