Another ER trip opens my eyes

Saturday night I started feeling sick, more so than usual... I was told that you get a chronic sore throat once you start getting in the ending stages of killing all the Lyme in your body. I wake up every morning with a sore throat, I have these medicated lollipops that I can suck on that help. But Saturday night it wouldn't go away. And I started to feel achy, I couldn't focus on anything that was being said as I sat and ate dinner with some of my co-workers.

The next day, Sunday, I was in bed, wondering if my inability to sallow from the pain was more than just the lyme. I had some left over amoxicillin from when I was talking 2,000 Mg every day for a couple months, back when I was doing antibiotic treatment, so I took a few to try and feel better, but I felt worse overtime I took them.

That night I was at my worst, I always think that pain and I have come to a similar understanding of each other after the past year or so. But my throat felt closed off it was so painful. I hadn't been eating or drinking in over 24 hours when around 8pm that night I passed out, I started to not seeing what was infront of me, and then my mom was talking to me and I couldn't hear her... next thing I new I was on the floor and hearing my dad talking to 911 on the phone.

After the ambulance came and checked me out I was on my way to the ER, now I wasn't only fighting a super sore throat and body aches and a fever that had been rising and falling all day, but I was having a panic attack over going back to the ER (if you want to understand about my past fears of the ER click here).

The frustration of educating nurses and Dr's over my disease is indescribable as I am lying there with my throat nearly closed off and sweating like a sinner in church out of panic and the fever that had spiked again. But after educating my nurses and a positive strep test I was told I couldn't leave until I drained 3 bags of IV fluids and antibiotics.

Me in the ER

As I was laying there in the ER sucking up IV juice from a bag I started to think about my disease, and how far I had come, where as how far the world had come. I was still having to explain to nurses and Dr's about my disease. I still wasn't getting covered for medicines that I needed from my insurance, infant recently I was being denied some very serious ones that I needed, and had been taking for over 6 months.

I was thinking about all of this and getting more and more frustrated with the Government. I didn't want me, or any one else to have to suffer because of either the CDC's pride, or stupidity, or maybe both. I became more and more angry as I was lying there in the ER. I had to go to the ER to find out if I had strep because I wasn't sure if it was Lyme or not, because there is hardly any funding for testing of the most vector bourn illness in the United States.

I remember the last time I was in the ER I was terrified and frustrated because I didn't understand what was happening to me, and why I was being put in the padded cell in the "special room" in the ER. And now I felt terrified and frustrated because I didn't understand why people couldn't just at least know about my disease. And know how to if not protect themselves, at least sympathize for those who have it. I know I can't expect empathy from people, because they have no clue how I feel, what it's all like. But I think there are also people who can't even have sympathy for those with Lyme because they don't even know what it is.

In my post on fear I said that the greatest reason for fear is the lack of understanding. And I still believe that is true. But I have another fear, and it's fear of and for our medical system. I have a really good LLMD but one scary stat that I can't seem to shake is that the average person that is bit by a tick takes 2 years to diagnose correctly with Lyme...

Imagine if you had Cancer and it took 2 years to diagnose your illness because Docters didn't understand what it was because the government said cancer didn't really exist... I mean I can't tell if that sounds like communism or just the plain old dark ages!

Either way it is wrong, and I shouldn't have to go to the ER for help and educate my doctors and nurses on my illness. And the only ones to blame for that are the CDC and the government. And it needs to end. Now!

-The Lyme Warrior