Posted 4/16/2016 3:36 AM (GMT 0)
Hello there,
Stranger..
Thanks for joining this thread and embarking on this journey with me.
My name is Zack, a junior in college, majoring in Environmental Sustainability. I want to be able to use my education to help promote sustainability in a world that is constantly depleting it's resources and help preserve farmland, green land, and open spaces for future generations and do my best to ensure them clean drinking water and clean air.
I have been diagnosed with Lyme Disease for over 8 years now. I have been experiencing some of the more debilitating symptoms recently, like heart palpitations, neurological symptoms, knee and joint pains. One day I felt so much pain and I didn't know from what that I actually went into my room and started to cry, flailing my arms and feet around making weird noises, trying to make the pain go away. That same week I attended very few of my classes and had trouble waking up and getting my day started, felt like chronic fatigue disorder. But I eventually made it out of that with some motivational videos and focusing on future goals. Which sometimes doesn't work because I can't think clearly at all at times. But right now I am doing okay because I am writing and focusing and things are coming full circle, but it could be one of those cyclical patterns.
My mom came home and I was in my room. It was the second time she had seen me like this and it worried her so much she immediately drove me to the hospital, even though I didn't want to. But then again I was saying very little, in a zombie like manner I remember walking down the stairs, shoulders slouched and that hollow feeling deep within my bowels. My counselor at school says it was clinical depression but I think it has something to do with my Lyme Disease and the improper functioning of my nervous system.
I voluntarily was hospitalized last summer and I learned that it's a great way to get away from stressors but a terrible place to be if you're trying not to be on medications. They did help, but they prescribed them way too fast. The first morning I was put on an antidepressant, then an anti psychotic because I said I talk to myself in my head (but doesn't everyone, like why is that dude brushing his teeth in the hallway in my head type of question). Nurse - "Do you talk to yourself?" Me - "Yeah but doesn't everyone? Like in their own heads?" Two hours later shes giving me antipyschotic medications.
Anyway, because my sleep schedule was way off, I was failing my first college course (Calculus 1) at a local community college, and I was working a banking job that wasn't me at all, and I let it decide who I was. After some deliberations with friends and family and a serious relapse of feeling hollow and like bugs were eating me from the inside out and getting scents of decaying things and heavy mucus like odors, and these are the symptoms I went into the hospital with.
Supposedly an MRI was done and my brain was good. But the guy performing it seemed so genuine and interested that I couldn't help but doubt it worked, because I didn't hear the machine turn on, but then again that could be another test where the huge thing turns on and makes noise.
When I was a kid I didn't really feel differently, except for being tired all the time. I was super hyper active as a kid, playing soccer 25 hours of the day, hormones etc raging, not worried about my health. Who would be in 7th grade if you've been healthy your entire life anyway. So I didn't know what I was getting into.
Some days are really bad, I'll be awakened and welcomed into the world startled, heart fluttering and anxiety is already beating me down. How will I look in class and what are people thinking of me when I walk around campus. I get really self conscious and start thinking people are seeing through me or not acknowledging me sometimes. One day a few weeks ago I came home and immediately felt threatened. I walked around my house with a knife and made sure no one was going to kill me. Sounds crazy but it happened.
It's kind of all over the place but that's how I am functioning right now. I am seeing a regular doctor who has prescribed me something for the anxiety, but finding a Lyme Specialist in the area is a bit difficult. I know I need to do that ASAP cause these symptoms are only getting worse. But my PCP made it seem like nothing could be done anyway. He saw my blood tests and told me I was okay, the Lyme disease is there but it isn't active? I was confused but with the complexity of the disease it's not hard being perplexed.