Info re Lyme Disease & Tick bites (How & where did I get bitten?)

Photo courtesy of California Dept of Public Health 

Ticks are small arachnids, part of the order Parasitiformes. Along with mites, they constitute the subclass Acari. Ticks are ectoparasites (external parasites), living by feeding on the blood of mammals, birds, and sometimes reptiles and amphibians  ~Wikipedia

And there you have it. Turns out it wasn't post natal depression in the truest sense of the words. It was a teeny little ectoparasite messing with me. For anxiety and depression are a part of Lyme. Wish I'd known that at the time. Life wouldn't have been quite so confusing.

When I think back, I realise there is a very real possibility I was bitten by a tick 25 years ago in Connecticut - the state where Lyme disease was originally recognised in 1975, and the very place it was named after: Lyme and its neighbouring town, Old Lyme.

And if Lyme Disease manifested in CT, then perhaps mine did too, for I lived in this beautiful wooded New England state for a year, working as Nanny, with three acres of garden in which the deer would roam? I would play right there with my three young charges. And of course there's every eventuality that I may have been bitten by a deer nymph tick/s then. So small, I would never have known. They're the size of a poppy seed. Yes, that's right: A poppy seed.

About that poem...

Fortunately that poem about suicide is no longer my now. It is but a memory. A memory of a time that was a dark and hellish place. A time I saw inside and out. A time that I learnt from, grew from, took strength from. A time that has led to so much more. A time that now means I am able to shine a light. For there was light to be found. Lots of it.

Lyme Disease, a poem about suicide: THE HERE & THE HEREAFTER

Lyme Disease - A poem about suicide

When I wrote this poem, clearly I was in a very bad place. I wanted to top myself. Don't get me wrong, I never would have gone through with it, but the idea appealed to me. A way out. No one knew how I felt, which now that I'm out of that hellish depression, strikes me as horrendous. But then, I was so busy being strong, I fooled everyone.

I'm guessing the main point people do go through with it, is down to feeling isolated, unable to share, pathetic, worried about being a social outcast? Perhaps pressured, even conditioned to believe that surely they ought to be able to cope?

I wrote this poem five years ago. But it has never been more relevant to me than it is now, just after a Lyme Disease diagnosis, and the fact that it describes many of the debilitating symptoms of Late/Chronic Lyme Disease to a tee.

For all who suffer with Lyme, the diagnosed and the undiagnosed, and indeed for all who suffer any chronic illness and dream of an alternative. This poem is for you.