I know, I know...the picture above is like "Whoa." But I took it for a reason: I really wanted to remember the madness of having Lyme Disease. Honestly, it taught me a lot of things...so in a way, I'm kinda a better person for it. When I left Connecticut a little over 3 years ago, I left with a small mark on the outside of my right knee. 12 hours later when I arrived in Charlotte, it grew to a big, red circle on the side of my knee. It grew bigger and more painful and, well, you can see what happened from the picture. Anyways, it was quite an ordeal, so here's what I learned from it:
1. Lyme Disease is No Joke
You're probably saying "Well duh, Chris." I know, anything that ends with "Disease" is no joke. But you'll run into a lot of people who know someone who caught Lyme Disease and they took care of it with some pills. Usually, if you catch it right away, you can take some pills and get it out of your system, no harm no foul. I, on the other hand, had Lyme Disease in my system for almost a whole year before it was diagnosed as Lyme Disease. According to the CDC, the ratio of Lyme disease infection is 7.9 cases for every 100,000 persons. For those who aren't familiar with it, Lyme Disease is a bacteria transmitted by tick bites and is very prevalent in the Northeast where, SURPRISE, I'm from. The symptoms can range from pain, to joint stiffness, to flu-like symptoms...not everyone with Lyme has the same symptoms. The longer it goes undiagnosed, the more debilitating it becomes. There were times where my body would feel just fine, and then out of nowhere my knee would blow up to the size of a melon and I'd have to get it drained frequently. Doctors didn't know what the deal was and it didn't help that I didn't recall being bitten by a tick at any point. The longer it goes undiagnosed, the worse it gets, and in rare cases Lyme Disease can be fatal. For me, my knee would swell so badly I couldn't walk some days, there were days where I'd have a fever of 103, and I'd be so fatigued all the time. It's brutal.
2. Be Aware
Since Lyme Disease is transmitted by ticks, you need to be careful of ticks when you're in wooded areas, even if your part of the country doesn't see many Lyme Disease cases. Wear long socks, use bug spray, etc. If you are bitten by a tick, remove it correctly and completely and keep the tick so the doctor can have it tested. Oh yeah, go to the doctor...if you do have Lyme, your doctor will prescribe some meds for you to take orally and you'll be a-ok. Just get it done early. Likewise, guard your pets against tick bites, because Lyme Disease can affect your pets as well, so I recommend K-9 Advantix or Frontline.
3. I Am Lucky
Like I said earlier, Lyme Disease becomes a lot worse the longer it goes untreated. I was blessed to come out of it with issues with a swollen knee and some occasional lingering knee pain. I saw many doctors, who tried many things to fix my knee problem, but it wasn't until I saw a bone & joint specialist that things turned around. At that point, I felt terrible and I was frustrated and I prayed God would help me find out what was wrong with me. My doctor just happened to go to med school in CT and worked a lot on Lyme Disease. He asked me where I moved from, and when I told him CT, he said "If I was a betting man, I'd guess you have Lyme Disease." And he was right. Seriously, I could've easily seen about 20 other doctors who would have though I had a bad knee joint or something. But God pulled through! My doctor tested my blood for Lyme, it came back positive, and he put me on the antibiotics. But, since it had been so long without treatment, the pills didn't work. So he set me up for a stronger treatment: IV medication. I had to go to the hospital to get a PICC Line put in my arm. A PICC line is that tube going into my arm in the picture above. It goes into a vein and goes all the way through to my heart. And every morning I had to get up bright and early and inject myself with some extremely strong medication. My doctor called it "The Atomic Bomb of Antibiotics." Sounds like fun, right? It wasn't fun to get a foot-long tube stuck in my arm, it wasn't fun injecting myself with meds every morning for a month. But you know what? The Lyme Disease is gone, I felt better, and I didn't suffer too bad physically because of it, thank GOD!
4. Socks Have More Uses Than Just For Your Feet
This point may make you laugh, but you'll see what I mean in just a minute. When I had the PICC Line in my arm, there was also about 4 inches of tubing that stuck outside of my arm where I had to do the injections. Of course, I couldn't leave this just hanging around, so when the PICC Line was put in, they tied it down with an ace bandage, which was fine. But you know, I'm right-handed...the PICC line was in my right arm...after taking the ace bandage off, giving myself the shots, then trying to wrap it up again, I was frustrated and the tube was going everywhere. Each week a nurse would come to the apartment to clean up my arm and change out the tube and replenish my meds, and she suggested I buy a pack of socks, cut the toes off, and wear the sock on my arm to hold everything down. I thought this was stupid...until like 2 days later when I got tired of messing with that dumb ace bandage! So I cut the toes off some socks and rocked it on my arm...what a brilliant idear! So from then on for the rest of the month I rocked a sock on my arm everywhere I went, even church lol. Oddly, no one ever noticed...and if they did, they didn't say anything. On a pro-ace bandage note, however, I remember we went to an ice cream place and I was messing with the ace bandage and that stupid tube, trying to get it down flat, and the girl at the ice cream place was like "I noticed you gave some blood today, so I gave you a free scoop." Well...who was I to argue with free ice cream?
5. God is GOOD
Getting the PICC Line put in and administering the meds was an ordeal, but the worst part of it was the cost. After what my insurance kicked in, the cost of having these IV meds was over $150...PER DAY. As a grad student I definitely didn't have that kind of money. On the first day the nurses arrived with the medication, they went over the costs and - after I recovered from the mild heart attack - they gave me a form I could fill out to see if maybe I'd qualify for some kind of assistance in paying for my meds. It didn't seem like I'd have much of a chance, but I filled it out anyhow. After my month of meds, the bill came in the mail and it was frightening. I remember driving down the road to school praying real hard. I asked God to help me find a way to pay for this, whether I had to go on a payment plan, whether I had to get a second part-time job, or both...either way, though, I knew God was going to provide a means for me to pay for this, even if I had to work hard for it. After work and classes, I came back home and decided to start by calling up the hospital to set up a payment plan. The lady on the line put me on hold while she pulled up my information, then came back on the line and asked if I had filled out that financial assistance form. I said I did and she replied, "Ok, that must be it, because the hospital has covered 100% of your costs." I was speechless...I mean completely flabbergasted. I asked her to repeat that again and she did. I was SO excited right then, I could've done a backflip. God came through HUGE for me...and He can do the same for you, you just have to have faith! :)
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