Lyme and Me
Who would think a bug so small
could make me feel so sick.
It sucked the life right out of me
they call this bug a tick.
Headaches, fever, body pain
fatigue will take you down.
Doctors, lawyers and government
This crap just makes me frown.
People sick and dying
they need to all agree
What medication we should take
to make us all pain free.
Green ribbons wave from all of us
screaming out the cry.
We need to stop these little bugs
before we see more die.
By Terri Mackinnon-Cross
Help Stop Lyme
- Lyme Disease
Lyme Disease has rapidly gotten out of control. Help Stop Lyme is our way of educating others to the challenges we have.
Living with Lyme Disease
In July 2012 my life was forever changed. I was visiting Orlando Florida and we decided to take our fishing rods down to the bank of a small pond that was sitting behind the Publix store and surrounded by residential home. It was 7.30 pm when my husband caught his fish and I decided to go over and take a picture of them together. Instead of staying on a somewhat flat trail I cut over the high grass to get to him.
This decision changed my life forever when I was bitten by a tick. Three days later I was suffering with my first look at a disease that would forever change feeling well again.
For months doctors could not figure out what was wrong with me. Fevers of 102, major fatigue, headache and body aches along with losing my voice nothing seemed to be making me better. By September it has esculated and I was admitted to hospital with Meningitis.
The doctors were still not positive as to what was happening in my health. They knew I had said I was bit by a bug but the test for Lyme came back negative. (I would eventually learn that this is normal as I was treated with antibiotics over the summer.)
With a high dose of meds for the nine days I stayed in the hospital with meningitis I started feeling better and my voice was coming back.
However, the fever came back and the fatigue was part of my daily life. Random pains from the bottoms of my feet to the top of my head. Headaches and tingling in my limbs have become a norm.
Again I was forced back into the hospital with the fever and massive headache to make sure that meningitis had not returned. It was at this time 6 months after being bit that the doctors finally came up with the conclusion that it indeed was Lyme.
At first I was glad that we finally figured out my problem but it was short lived.
The more that I discovered about this disease the more concern that was put into our family. I live in Canada and doctors and government are not prepared for this disease. The amount of medication I require is not allowed. The health care system is fighting with itself on what to do. Until then I wake up not knowing if today is the day I will be admitted back into the hospital.
