One thing that always throws me off is the comment, "You look like you're feeling great today!" While it's a blessing that I don't usually look as badly as I feel, it's incredibly jarring that my physical appearance can be so utterly incongruent with my pain levels.
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| This is what Lyme disease looks like. You cannot imagine the pain I was in when this photo was taken... |
Inside my body on any given day, I'm battling dozens of symptoms that no one can see. Yet, I'm expected to function like a "normal" person, because I still look like a normal person (No comments from my brother here!). When I first came to my Lyme doctor, I had over 60 symptoms--and not a single one visible to anyone else! With treatment, we've whittled that symptom list down to a much smaller number of symptoms, but like I said, there are still dozens.
With so much going on in my body and in my life that no one can see but me, I feel so torn--after all, it's really nobody's business but my own if I'm sick, so why the need for people to know and understand Lyme disease? Simply put, doctor after doctor discredited my Lyme disease as being all in my head because I didn't/don't "look" sick. I don't want others going through the hell that I went through to get diagnosed, but unfortunately that's exactly what is happening all across the country.
The fact that in every single state in the United States, you can drag around a list of over 60 symptoms of an endemic disease and be told over and over that there is nothing wrong with you "because you don't look sick" pushes me to keep telling my story--the story of Lyme disease--until it is heard.
Just out of curiosity--Lyme friends, how many of you were told by doctors that "it's all in your head?"
