Today may have been my sixth of ten days of treatment at the West Clinic in Pocatello, Idaho, but it only took about three days for the staff at West to figure out that I’m a special case.
And I don’t mean that I have a special case of Lyme disease. Nope, I have a moderate case of Lyme (4 out of 10, Dr. J says) and, next to Jake, I am, as far as I can see, the second healthiest person to sit tethered to an IV here in the last six days. Rick, an elderly father who’s being treated for seizures induced by his many stroke medications, is in far more dire shape. And Rori, a woman about my age who’s lost her voice to Lyme and gets around with a walker, has it way worse than I do, and she’s even here alone. And yet, I’m the special case: the mental spaz who can’t seem to turn off the waterworks in the IV lounge until they finally move me to a private room, more for the sake of the other patients than for me, I presume; me, the nutcase who had a panic attack after neural therapy so now the hypnotherapist has to make special late-night and early-morning cell phone calls in a desperate attempt to get this particularly difficult patient through the necessary treatment.
See, I had imagined that days of IVs, cell therapy shots in my butt, and Procaine and B12 shots in my skull would eventually wear down my phobias of needles, of doctors, of cruel and unusual punishment strange medical therapies; I had imagined that I’d walk into week two with the nonchalance of an old pro—You’re busy, Misty, I’d say, I can do my own IV today. But nooo.
Week two opened with yet another sub-par live blood analysis and the sentence of more shots, this time in my thyroid, spleen, liver, and adrenals—not to mention a fully terrifying stellate ganglion block—a shot of anesthesia in my neck’s upper cervicals that would allegedly quiet my sympathetic nervous system and quell signs of PTSD—and an absolutely hideous injection in my Frankenhauser’s ganglion. Don’t know where that is? Here’s a diagram (Figure 24-1). Shudder.
So, I did what any 36-year-old grown-ass woman with a deep-seated needle-phobia would do: I stomped out of the office, crossed the parking lot, collapsed on a narrow grass median, and sobbed like a teenage girl. I cursed the universe that gave me Lyme disease and weighed my options—I could fly back to San Francisco today. Maybe antibiotics aren’t so bad. Maybe I could live with Lyme. I need an ice cream cone.
And then, at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, I went to bed for seven hours. For dinner, I ate three bites of hamburger and two shards of cucumber. I’ve barely spoken 20 words since noon. Now here I am, spilling my guts out on the internet for anyone to see, and for what?
I started this blog because I believed it was important to share a real story about Lyme disease; because so many people, including myself, knew absolutely nothing about it; because so many people’s lives have been ruined by a degenerative disease that could have been treated if not for so much misinformation and shoddy medical practice. I’ve gone out on a limb, and I am a deeply private person (a secretive Scorpio no less), because I thought I could shed some light on this nasty infectious disease in a way that might resonate, with humor and candor.
So I guess you might say that we’ve reached a turning point. I could put on the positive face my family is pushing me for and write a fluffy blog about all the amazing healing treatments I’m getting here at the West Clinic (yay!). Or, I could tell the truth of my experience as I promised I would from the start, even if shit gets dark. The truth is, I still believe in what I’m doing here. I just don’t believe in faking it. Chronic illness is hard, and intensive treatments like these can take a serious physical and emotional toll.
For some, this two-week horror show is a walk in the park—when Dr. J suggested prostrate injections for Jake, Husband said, “Great, let’s do it!” (This explains why I’m angry with him.) But it so happens that it’s my lot in life to be irrationally yet profoundly terrified of everything I currently require to get better. And while I may have just four days to go at West Clinic, these two weeks are only the tip of the iceberg—there are lots more IVs to come, so I think I’m entitled to cry in the parking lot on a hot Idaho day and then go home and hide beneath the covers.
Tomorrow, it’s IVs for breakfast.
Love in the Time of Lyme 