Being a Mom with Lyme Disease and other Musings

I've often wanted to go read a blog or website devoted to moms who have lyme disease (not necessarily their kids having lyme disease).  I find that there are situations that are unique to being a mom and having lyme disease while raising kids.  Like playdates - how you schedule them when you never know how you will be feeling or if you had enough energy to clean your house.  Or talking to friends.  I feel an anxiety about getting past everyday conversations with other moms because when I go past the surface, my world is all lyme related - all my thoughts, hopes and dreams (well, ALL, is a bit dramatic but many) hinge on getting better from Lyme.  And I assume if I open up my mouth and talk about all that, most people, living normal lives, would find me awfully hard to relate to.  They may like me, but people want to be friends with whom they can connect, so most of the time I keep my mouth shut and keep the relationships at the surface level.  It is uncomfortable feeling, but maybe it is more comfortable than talking about Lyme and having them realize that I am obsessed with it (not really, but just obsessed with getting better).  Yes, there are other things to talk about, kids and their activities, etc but I always feel like no one really knows the real me because the life I am now living is not reflective of the person that I truly am inside.  Right now I am overweight, don't exercise, keep mostly to myself and hang out with my family and my husband.  Not at all the hiking, running, biking, gardening, volunteering, social active person that I was pre-Lyme.  Not to mention all the nervousness, anxiety, depression that I have experienced (and the trauma of terrible Babesia nightmares and terrors that traumatized me when I first came down with lyme.  That is not stuff I open up to ANYBODY about other than my husband and my mom.  I didn't have ANY of those issues at all before Lyme Disease and I just never totally feel comfortable in my own skin with those things. Ugh!!!)  Anyways, these are the things I feel on a daily basis.  I am uncomfortable having other moms over to my house on playdates because when we really get to talking, I am afraid of becoming close friends, because I feel like they can never really know the real me because of the things that I won't ever share - all the Lyme stuff.  I know that stuff isn't me - but it is what I am going through - and most moms can't relate at all unless they have Lyme to - and I am in an area where NO ONE has Lyme so I just kind of keep to myself.  Just putting it out there.  I am sure some other moms feel the same way.  Read a book by a woman with Lyme Disease and she talked about all her friends seemed to fade away when she got Lyme.  I can't tell you how many times I have read it on the web that people lose their friends when they have Lyme Disease.  Doctors who treat Lyme say it is one of the most heartbreaking things about treating people with Lyme because friends and family understand cancer and have empathy and compassion for those with it but they don't understand Lyme Disease and what it entails.  I look forward to a better future, where money is invested into drugs that stop Lyme in its tracks - not necessarily antibiotics - but kind of like the drugs they have come up with to treat AIDS patients that stop the virus from being able to replicate itself.  Wouldn't that be fantastic?  I look forward to more research being done on Chronic Lyme.  I look forward to the controversy ending and for everyone working together to come up with treatment for people with Chronic Lyme other than saying "Deal" and take all these crazy meds that screw you up more than they help you.  I look forward to a time when Chronic Lyme Patients have a proven treatment plan that is used world wide and is effective. I remember reading about a study in which the subjects were given a long-acting dose of Doxycycline which kept the blood levels of the medication high for an entire month.  And then other subjects were given the Doxycycline every day at certain times.  Those given the long-acting Doxy had 100% success in eliminating the Lyme organisim, where those given Doxy every day at a certain time, didn't fair as well.  I don't remember the study exactly but I remember thinking - I wish they moved forward to manufacture a long-acting Doxy pill/shot for every single person who came down with Lyme Disease so that it would eliminate it right from the get-go.  While I stay quiet, silently suffer because I don't want the extra stress of being misunderstood or judged, I say a prayer, for the doctors who treat the lyme, the pharmaceutical companies that make medicines and research new ones to combat the Lyme, and for the scientists who are studying Chronic Lyme - that they find truth, and that they come up with cures for all those of us suffering silently around the world.  And lastly, give.  Give to the organizations that are researching because research is what is going to change all the doctors minds who currently don't believe or don't understand Chronic Lyme.