Behind the Headlines

I just submitted a story for the health page on Lyme Disease. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except, working on this story has intersected with my life. Each of the symptoms, the prognosis - it wasn’t just something that happens to other people; it was something that will or has happened to one of my people.
Someone close to me has Lyme Disease. He contracted it a few years ago as an employee of a state’s DNR department. It started with really sore muscles, a sore neck he couldn’t move, heart palpitations and eventually Bell’s Palsy - paralysis of his facial muscles. All this and the guy was still commuting 7 miles each way on his bike to and from work, digging holes and clearing paths in the mid-July weather.

Since he was on the east coast where they’re a little more familiar with the disease - it was named after a town in Connecticut where most of the population complained of similar health problems - it was a somewhat quick diagnosis. However, the nature of the beast is that it’s never truly gone for some people.

The more I researched, the more I cringed. Of course I had researched it then, when he first came down with it, but in the last few years more information has become concrete. Advances have been made. The uncertainty, the maybe it could do this horrible thing to you is the worst part.

After meeting with Tammy Soncrant and her mother, and seeing the pain she was in and the degeneration of her health that she credits to Lyme Disease, it became a very real thing. I thought about all the regular aches my person has. All of the tiredness. The irritability and mood swings - which is considered a side effect of LD. It brought it all under a microscope. For the last week, it’s been at the top of my mind. I guess, to a degree, I’ve become more sympathetic, a little less annoyed with the frequent “but my legs feel weird” complaint.

Tammy has been planning her funeral as a result of her current state of health. She contacted the news because she said she wanted to create more awareness of the disease and let people know it happens here. If one person, she said, was able to benefit from her story, then it was worth telling it.

If I count, then it’s already worked.