The Fight of My Life

I’ve lived with chronic illness pretty much my entire life. I don’t know what it feels like to be healthy. I can’t remember what it feels like to have abundant energy or to not be in pain. For the last 2.5 years I’ve been getting treatments for Chronic Lyme Disease and its various co-infections.

 

As many of you know, the last couple of months I haven’t felt very well. On Sunday my parents and I took an emergency trip to see my doctor. It’s such a good thing we did. Turns out I’m a lot sicker than I knew, or cared to admit. 

 

Below are a few things my doctor told me this week: 

The parasites are causing fungus balls and mucus pods in your frontal lobe. It's like a cesspool in there! 

Your liver is working hard to get the junk out of your body, that's why you can't sleep. Don't expect to sleep much between 11:00pm and 3:00am when your liver is active. Sleep as much as you can during the day.

 

Have extra grace for yourself the next couple of weeks. They're going to be hard.

This doesn’t really sound like good news, but it is! Yes, the parasites in my blood stream may be giving me fungus balls in my brain, but those parasites and the bacteria that’s coming out of me right now is what first made me sick so many years ago. And it's on the way out!

 

I have a massive amount of junk in my blood stream right now and it needs to come out. If we don’t get it out, it will resettle deep in my muscles. My liver is incredibly inflamed and overworked, junk is backed up into my lungs, and the fungus and mucus in my brain is making it hard to think. 

 

We’ve finally hit the mother-load. If we can get rid of the junk that made me so sick in the first place, this should change everything. Once I get rid of this, I should feel so much better! This, my friends, is the beginning of the end! 

 

So I ask for your prayers. The next couple of weeks to a month or two are going to be really difficult. I’m going to feel sick and very tired. On the outside I’m just a girl sitting on the couch watching movies, but on the inside my body is working hard and in the fight of its life. 

 

Please pray that I will hold on to hope and remember that the end may be in sight. Pray that I will be able to have grace for myself. I'm not very good at that and tend to feel guilty when I'm not "productive." Pray that I will grow closer to God during this trial and allow Him to heal me emotionally as He heals my body.  Pray that I can get rid of this junk quickly and that this horrible phase will end sooner rather than later. Pray for me as I do treatments here at home. One of the treatments is very painful and I am dreading it. Pray that I don't need to do the treatments as often as anticipated.

Finally pray for my mom too. She's going through this same experience as me (I got a lot of this junk from her) and she isn't feeling well either. 

I'll leave you with a clip from NCIS: New Orleans. We were watching this in the hotel room after our appointments on Tuesday night. Let's just say mom and I freaked out a little when we saw it! I'm tell you, ya gotta watch out for those fungal balls!

Thank you my friends! Thank you for hanging in there with me and walking with me on this journey. It's one I couldn't make alone!