I’m diving in the deep end of transparency here, so bear with me. It is impressively uncomfortable. I need your help! I am sick. I have slowly lost the ability to work a stable and consistent job. I am 29. To live, I rely on child support, food stamps, credit cards, and help from a friend and a parent. My roommate and I provide some childcare services out of our home and homeschool our kids together, which works only because I am able to lean into incapacitation as needed by relying totally on her throughout the day. Unsustainable, to say the least. I do not qualify for disability. I have recently discovered that I require intensive, astronomically expensive treatment to overcome my illness. I aspire for self sufficiency one day, but after years of grueling healing, I can now see that I can’t heal in the comfort of privacy. Actually, self sufficiency as aspiration is a lie…but it sure sounds good, doesn’t it? I need community. I aspire for interdependence, the likes of which I’ve never seen in our culture. I aspire to live by “my abundance, your need.” I aspire for abundance (of health, wealth, time, resources) so I have something to share with those suffering, so others don’t have to suffer in silence or isolation the way I and so many have and do. Invisible illnesses create invisible people. Healing cannot happen in a vacuum. The way I see it, our cultural hyper-independence largely contributes to why we’re all so so sick and getting sicker. I digress…Though I understand abundance is hard to come by anymore, I ask that you share it with me if you have it. I pinky promise to pay it forward when my time comes.

My illness: I have Lyme disease and some co-infections, specifically, most problematically, babesia, a blood parasite that behaves similarly to malaria. The infection can cause life-threatening complications. I have been sick since childhood. I didn’t know what to call “it” until fairly recently, though I have been chasing diagnoses for all of my adult life. I now suspect maybe a tick bite from a camping trip when I was small. As a kid, it was crippling anxiety, severe depression, OCD, bladder infections, daily nosebleeds, geographic tongue, IBS, temperature and emotional and blood sugar regulation issues, joint pain, brain fog, disordered eating, and chronic fatigue (from what I can remember, it’s fuzzy). Today it is a fluctuating but minuscule daily capacity for life, debilitating fatigue, over-stimulation, vertigo, neurological issues such as visual disturbance (tunnel vision, wavy vision, feeling cross-eyed), constant headaches and head pressure, exercise intolerance, brain fog, food intolerances, neck and shoulder tension, uncomfortable to severe digestion problems, malaise, derealization (quite possibly the scariest symptom of all), kidney/gallbladder/spleen discomfort, and all of the mental/emotional consequences of being an isolated sick person, of which there are many. I have “cured” myself of absolutely horrific full-body eczema and tachycardia, both of which have hospitalized me and left me bedridden for months at a time at different points in my adult life. I use quotations around “cure” because relapse is common, though I feel fairly proficient in managing these two symptoms with my arsenal of holistic health supplies. (If my hours of study in health and healing had been with an accredited institution, I’d be a doctor by now.) Exposure to a common virus or environmental toxin can incapacitate me for a month or more. So far, the handful of doctors I’ve seen over the years have not been able to help me more than I’ve been able to help myself. I manage my slew of symptoms as a full time job with very expensive and high quality supplements, natural remedies like homeopathy and herbs, regular sauna use, sobriety, a very low demands life, and an almost pristine diet. That is, on top of my other full time job (which I adore), mothering.

I have not been completely transparent with even my inner circle about this season’s level of chronic illness, partly out of shame (dependence and lack of productivity are disgraceful in our culture), partly out of denial. The spiritual community warns against “identifying” with your illness. In denouncing my illness as part of my identity, I have not been able to accept the reality of my life. In reality, my illness affects every facet of my experience. And despite fluctuating levels of disability, it always has for as long as I can remember. It has robbed me of my youth, a career and income, travel, more babies, a social life, my art, my hobbies, my joy, my time, my freedom, my growth, my purpose. It has kept me so small. I do believe this is my path for a reason. I am grateful for all of the many dark nights of the soul, the arduous work of having and treating an invisible and sneaky illness (that allopathic medicine scarcely recognizes as real), the pain, the lessons, the grief, the wisdom. I am ready to put down the hyper-independence and the illness that controls me. I know by now my purpose here has to do with community and culture building and holistic wellness. Much to my chagrin, I cannot get to it without a lot of help, more than I’ve been willing to admit. I need a working brain and body. So here I am, humbly asking for your help. I’m sure the vulnerability hangover will leave me feeling gutted like a fish, but perhaps this walk away from hyper-independence will soon trend as the latest cathartic experience to chase? Hear it from me, folks, it’s unreal.

To outline my financial ask:

I am looking to work with the James Clinic, a local Lyme literate practice with a functional approach. Their reputation precedes them. The first month of treatment includes 4 appointments, diagnostic evaluation, and a personalized treatment plan for $1500. This has been gifted to me by a family member. Thereafter, $200 a month gets me unlimited appointments, though the integrative therapies of said treatment plan (like IV vitamins and peptide therapies, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, ozone therapy, extracorporeal blood ozone & oxygenation, etc.) are an additional fee (exact figures unknown to me). To be honest, I’m not sure how expensive treatment will end up costing, or how long I’ll need to be in it. Lyme can take years to treat and relapse is common. I’m guessing between the monthly fee and therapy costs I’m looking at $400-$700 a month for treatment, but I can update as I go if I make it to treatment. I am asking for help covering medical costs, debt accrued during this hellscape, and covering my son and I’s cost of living while I am unable to work.

If you’ve made it this far in my dissertation asking for your hard-earned money, bless you. If you can relate to my suffering, bless you. If you can give, bless you. Anything helps. And thank you for witnessing me.