Oddly enough, today I had a lot of the more "minor" or "secondary" Lyme's symptoms pop up. None of them are crippling or dramatic enough to render their own posts, so they will share one here.
Sleep issues: Sleep related to the fatigue. Lyme's is an infection, so some nights I wake up with fever-like chills and sweats that keep me up. Additionally, Lyme's disease interferes with the body's ability to go into REM sleep. REM sleep is the deepest level of sleep where the body does a lot of it's repairs and genuine resting. Lacking hours in REM sleep makes 8 hours of sleep do as much good as 4 hours for me. The night-sweats are rare, but the REM deprivation is every stinking night. Oh sleep issues, please leave. Getting adequate sleep is hard enough in school and you are not being helpful. OK? Thanks.
Heart issues: Singing gets to be rather interesting and difficult when you're heart is flapping around in your chest like a fishtail. Heart "palpitations" will come out of nowhere and flutter around as if there is butterfly stuck in my heart chambers. This isn't really an issue unless I'm doing something (like singing) that requires quality oxygen flow. I am in the school chorus, an a capella group, and I sing all the time at church - heart issues interfere with my life SO much. Dear heart, calm down. There is nothing exciting going on and I would really appreciate the oxygen right now. Mk? You Debby-Downer, you.
Nausea: I'm sick to my stomach and hungry at the same time. I often have trouble judging if I'm actually hungry, if I am getting a virus, or if it's just the nausea. For the sake of proper nutrition and not getting fat, I usually make the call based on the time of day - no joke. Before Lyme's, nothing ever made me nauseous. Nausea, you're making this whole "taking care of my body with proper nutrition" thing really difficult. Cut it out, ya jerk.
Numbness: I can be sitting in a well-aligned position and still have digits fall asleep on me. Sometimes, it's unusual places, like the back of my hand or my shin that looses sensation. It's so inconvenient because the only thing to do is to keep moving. As you can imagine, that couples really nicely with the chronic joint pain. -_- Really numbness, really? As if dealing with everyone else wasn't bad enough, you had to chime in too? RUDE!
Mood Changes: At first, I though this was my own overreaction to being sick all the time this summer, but apparently going from ordinary to anxious, to bawling, back to ordinary in the span of a week is a known symptom of Lyme's. This explains why my regular practitioner though I was depressed - I was.... but only a little. This means I do stupid things like cry in front of people far too often now adays. This is perhaps my greatest contributor to this terrible discouragement I'm facing. Happy disposition, dear, we've been so good since middle school, what happened? Please don't let this disease ruin our relationship. Please stay with me!
Some days, I feel almost completely normal with only slight fatigue or minor joint pain. Others, I want someone to cover me head-to-toe in Band-Aids and read me stories to keep my mind off of things. With your caring prayers and gushing affection, even Band-Aid days are manageable. For that, you are my heroes.
Goshdarnit, another long post. I'll get better about writing decently short ones at some point, I promise.
All my Love,
~Melissa
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