Help Fight Lyme: Urgent Medical Support Needed

I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease, Bartonella and Anaplasmosis in 2018 and have been fighting as hard as I can against them ever since. After six years, I am losing this battle. This disease and its co-infections have been slowly overtaking my mind, body, and soul as I worked tirelessly to afford to live and pay for endless treatments on my own. Unable to afford to see a specialist in four years, it has taken complete control of my mind and body.

I have been unable to work in many weeks with no improvement from rest and my only chance at getting my life back is to see a specialist again. I fear losing my home and safety on top of my mind and body if I am unable to receive swift treatment. It has always been incredibly hard for me to ask for help, I am in a position where there is nothing else I can do but plead for it.

I am going to share something that I recently wrote about my struggle with Lyme:

"It feels impossible to articulate the irreparable damage that Lyme has caused. Lyme ripped through my life and left scattered pieces of a person behind. A person that has the appearance of a life but there's something missing. There is a creeping darkness where passion and creativity once resided, an unexplainable discomfort behind every word that is uttered, the silent but constant screaming of a person trapped, alone, in a hole that is invisible. You want to scream, but no one can hear you. You are drowning in your own darkness. The spark that fuels my soul was slowly dimmed while I went about my life, unaware of the eventual inevitability of losing myself entirely. Lyme has been affecting my life for such a long time that the person who I was, and who I still reach for in the dark somewhere inside of me, is further away now than I ever wanted to allow. I have been holding onto the hope that I can find myself again, not all is lost and one day I will be a complete person again. The idea that I will be reunited with myself fully is something I have not been able to let go of, it keeps me rising up every day and fighting this disease.

In the earlier days of my diagnosis, the person that I truly am felt nearer and with each passing day that person is harder to find. The person who was always on the move, creating and exploring. I forced introverts out of their shells to befriend them and take them along for the ride. The person who had too many ideas to keep track of, who wanted to learn how to do everything and changed their major every time a professor inspired them. There isn't an art form I wouldn't try to use to express the never-ending well of inspiration that overflowed inside of me. I loved working with my hands to make my thoughts and emotions into something tangible for other people to see.

If a person didn't know me before I had Lyme, I don't want them to know me at all. I feel as though there's nothing to know, there is only the burden of the missing pieces in my thoughts, my speech, my ability to connect not only to myself but to those around me. I have become a recluse who is exhausted by the amount of effort it takes to have a conversation. The mental gymnastics I have to perform to keep up, the frustration behind the empty space where a word should exist but it's just out of reach, the feeling of discomfort in the presence of people as if it's written all over my face that I am not well. The illness feels so visible to me because it determines my every move. My mind, body, and heart are under the control of a foreign invader.

I am the person who helps others, I am the one you call when you're in trouble and need someone to rely on to be there for you. And I couldn't help myself, I felt as though I had lost complete control over myself, over my life.

The inexplicable force that drives a person, the fire that you believe will forever burn behind you slowly burns out. The light dims behind your eyes, the ease of being yourself, a person, becomes more and more difficult. Your body decays from the inside but others can't see it. The ability to explore the world mentally and physically is taken from you day by day, as more time passes, the more exhausted you become. I miss myself, I miss my life. I miss feeling at home in my mind. Most days it hurts to hold up my phone in bed. I don't know what I'm doing anymore or why I'm doing it. I am lost, I am not present, I am not there, the thing you see before you is struggling to stand, to contribute a word to the conversation, not to focus on all of the things going on in my own body. It's incredibly hard to focus when your brain is on fire, the lights are burning your eyes, your legs are shaking from the weight of holding yourself upright, you're lost in the fog in your mind and can't see ahead of you. There is only so much hope in the world, let alone inside a body that is endlessly fighting every second of every day just to exist. Comfort isn't even a possibility anymore. The only option is to isolate yourself in a dark room with methods of distraction to try and stay sane, the outside world has too many factors to account for. I don't even want anyone to speak to me, to look at me. I feel like they can see me dying, they know I'm different, they can tell there's something wrong with me. The panic of feeling the tics of my face and hands, the redness of my eyes and skin, tiredness interpreted as rudeness. I have broken down into tears of exhaustion just standing and waiting for people to be ready to leave a place when I physically can no longer stand. I feel like I have to be constantly explaining myself to make people understand so they don't come up with their own reasons why I can't do something, it is so exhausting. I am tired. The things that make me me are slipping away every single day. It is torturous watching this happen and being helpless to stop it. Everything is so expensive because our healthcare system is broken and I can only work so much when I am sick every single day. I am exhausted, mind, body, and soul."

Thank you so much for your time, anything you can donate will help so much and be so appreciated.