Tag Archives: Chronic Illness

LONGER THAN FOREVER

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I have been ill the entire time my husband and I have been married.  In fact, my first symptoms began one week after Tom proposed to me.  Rather than running away, he chose to embrace me and whatever challenges would lie ahead.  Over the years, my illness has been called Interstitial Cystitis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome. No one really knew why, as time went on, I continued to experience a myriad of bizarre and disabling symptoms. After many years, many doctors and a whole lot of testing, we now know that my symptoms have likely been due to Lyme Disease all along and we are just waiting for the results of some where to buy carisoprodol online specialized blood tests to have our proof.

My husband and I recently celebrated our 7th anniversary. I had been saving up my “spoons” (AKA “energy” by us CFS sufferers) to do something special.  There are those, whether it be spouses, friends or family, that will continue to love us even through the darkest of times.  I have been extremely ill the last year and a half and it was important for me to celebrate this marriage milestone by reflecting positively on the journey my husband and I have been on together.  This short film represents our struggles, but more importantly, that it is possible for love to grow deeper even in the midst of chronic illness.

 

LYME DISEASE AND ROBERT FROST

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I have labored for many months on thoughts- thoughts about Lyme Disease, thoughts if I should write a blog and thoughts about what my first post should be about, if and when, I finally decided to write one. No amount of thinking seemed to generate the right words to convey how debilitating this disease has been for me and the many others I have encountered along the path.

It has been said that Lyme Disease is a journey, a marathon. With a stroke of insomnia last night, my inspiration for the first post finally came from a well-known poem:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning buy carisoprodol soma equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost, 1916

The character in Robert Frost’s poem stood at a fork in the road and decided for himself which road he would travel. In contrast, I was not so fortunate as to choose my own road…but rather, it was chosen for me. Lyme has become the path I find myself on. Now, I trepidatiously walk the less travelled road of chronic illness. I hope and pray, that although this particular road was thrust upon me, I may still experience the same outcome as Mr. Frost. By taking the road less traveled, whether by choice or by chance, it will have made all the difference in my life.