When A-Z Lyme meets The Mighty

Over an year ago I became a contributor to THE MIGHTY, meaning they accepted to publish on their website some of my Lyme related articles. They offered me the exposure I needed to voice my story and raise more awareness for Lyme disease. Thanks to them, some of my articles were featured on Yahoo and Huffington Post. I couldn’t have reached a wider audience on my own. In addition, they added a direct link to my A-ZLYME.COM on each of my stories that they published. That little link they added, helped me increase the traffic to my website and have […]

THE WORST 40 MINUTES IN MY WHOLE LIFE

Years back, while I was still struggling to get a diagnosis for my mysterious invisible illness, I reached the limit of my patience. I still remember this incident as if it took place yesterday. It was my first visit to a neurologist’s office.  I really had high hopes for this appointment. After seeing many other specialists before him, all unable to offer me an explanation for my multitude of symptoms, I was hoping he would be the one that would have a breakthrough. I was kind of at the end of the line, facing a dead end. To my surprise, […]

EXPLAIN MY PAIN: LYME

A journey of pain and suffering Being a Lyme sufferer prevented me from getting back to working full-time and made me jump through a lot of hoops. In a nutshell, I was one of the lucky ones who managed to see the light at the end of the tunnel, meaning that I managed to find a way to live a normal life after becoming a Lymie. I won’t lie to you, this was a long journey with ups and downs and many dead ends. It was a journey that I did all alone cause most of my friends vanished on […]

GOT LYME? MAKE A LYMONADE! -part 2

Change is always for the better! One morning I asked myself if it wouldn’t be easier for me to do what I could do and completely forget about the others. Solely focus on me and my needs. I kept on telling myself this until I incorporated it into my way of thinking. The moment I changed my way of thinking, everything seemed easier, better, brighter. It hurt for a few weeks until one day when I discovered I was enjoying my new freedom. I felt free because I could have stayed the whole day without feeling weird, inventing excuses, or […]

GOT LYME? MAKE A LYMONADE! -part 1

Lymonade anyone?In my first years as a Lymie, during the short occasions I was going out socializing with friends, I found myself talking about my Lyme disease. Usually people were talking about how great everything was going for them, what had happened at work, what shopping spree the girls had, what restaurant they have gone, and babies. None of those topics was contingent with what I had on my depressed agenda. My days were passing at a totally different pace, in a different environment where I had to deal constantly with my sickness which had taken over my life. My […]

BLOCKING THE PAIN CAN HAVE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES

  When you are chronic pain sufferer or a Lymie (Lyme disease victim) you are accustomed to pain. You can’t complain anymore about it because it is part of your normality. By now you learnt how to live with it and how to ignore it. You don’t run to the doctor anymore when your joints get swollen and ache or when you have muscle pain and twitches, horrible migraines, heart palpitations and so on. The doctor can’t help you anyway! He can’t make them go away! He’s not a wizard! Since you are dealing daily with a cocktail of symptoms […]

BORRELIA’S IMMUNE EVASION STRATEGY

Ixodes scapularis ticks are known to carry and transmit Borrelia Burgdorferi, resulting a multi-system illness affecting humans and animals as well. How does a bacteria trick an innate immune system? It uses a mechanism to fight the hosts’ immune response. Researchers from the University of Maryland (UMD) have discovered how Borrelia Burgdorferi can survive for months within the human body. Dr. Utpal Pal and his team have done research on Lyme and Borrelia for over a decade at UMD. One of his latest studies revealed that Borrelia has an incredible ability  of creating a protein that dissolves the host’s body […]

LYME POET – THE STORY BEHIND THE NAME

Recently I have been asked on few different occasions why I chose The Lyme Poet as a pseudonym for my writing. What was the reason behind it or what was the connection between Lyme and my poetry. To answer the question, I will say that Lyme and poetry are two of the things that describe me the most. I write poetry and I am a Lyme disease advocate. I even write poetry about Lyme disease. As a chronic Lyme disease sufferer I have seen my health deteriorating to a point where I thought there was no turning back. Lyme stole […]

TOP 10 WORST SYMPTOMS OF LYME DISEASE

  If someone would ask me what are the most annoying Lyme-related symptoms that I ever experienced, I would have a list ready within less than a minute. As a late stage Lyme disease victim I experienced a lot of symptoms, mostly because my illness was not discovered on time. Thus I ended up developing neurological symptoms, muscles and joints problems, heart and circulation and digestion. Let’s start the final countdown and see what are the insidious symptoms. Keep in mind that the list below starts with the less annoying symptom and ends with the winner, the most disturbing symptom […]

THE PAIN OF NOT LOOKING SICK

  When you suffer from an invisible illness things are more challenging because you need to deal also with the pain of not looking sick. It feels awful being in pain, living in pain and not being believed. When you have to constantly explain yourself and convince others that your sickness is real and you are not  hypochondriac, it is a horrible feeling.   Take a look at my photo above. At a superficial glance, there’s nothing wrong with me. I look just fine! That’s where everyone is wrong! Little you or others know about the war going on under […]