I couldn't quit, because I won't quit

I just finished my first semester of taking full 14 credit classes since I have been diagnosed. I wasn't 100% sure I would be able to do it, plus work, but I did, and I passed! It took a couple days of sleeping off finals and letting it all sink in to actually feel proud of myself. And I am.

This semester I learned many things socially, educationally, spiritually, mentally and physically. Most of them about myself. This is one thing about my chronic illness--I learn so much about myself. The 2 biggest things I am still working on, but that I learned from this semester especially is, 1- being ok with myself, and where I am at. And 2- realizing I am stronger than I really think, and the reason behind why I am so strong.

It is hard to have a chronic illness and not compare yourself to others. I am guilty of that. It's always been said you should only compare yourself with you... the only problem with telling someone with a chronic illness they should only compare themselves to themselves is it entails them to remember who they used to be, what they used to be able to do, and makes them hate their situation even more.

For example, I love learning about things I am passionate about. That's why I love college, I learn about so many things I want to learn about. The hard thing is the effort it takes for me to learn something now, where as before Lyme Disease, is frustrating. Where I could have sat in a lecture and left understanding everything before, I now record a few of my classes and listen to the lectures over again sometimes multiple times, to make sure I understand and know the material. 80 percent of the time it's not music I'm listening to when I'm walking around with my headphones in. Studying for finals takes me twice as long as others. Then you hear the kids in your class obsessing over those .5 percentages they have between an A and an A-. I couldn't help but feel really crummy about my C when I hear someone telling me they could skip the final and pass with an 91 percent, but I know they will come everyday and still do the extra credit to finish the class with 101 percent. How can I not compare myself to that? It's not saying "I'm worse than them because my grades are worse." It's more like "Why am I putting in so much more effort and yet I'm 2% from a D?" At that point it is easy to throw in the towel, and give up. Right? When it takes so much more work, why try? 

I learned "why" this semester. When a very smart friend told me something nobody has ever told me before. It was one of those rough days when Lyme was winning everything. The depression was bad, and I was ready to ditch school and go home sick. I was ready to give up on everything. I. Was. Done. And I told her that, I told her I was tired of being strong. I didn't want to fight anymore. I wasn't the "Lyme Warrior" my blog said I was. On and on and on I went. 

Until she finally said, "ya know what Sadie, do it. Just give up! Go ahead." 

I was stunned. Nobody had  ever said that to me. I don't tell people when I feel like I'm losing with Lyme just to have them tell me I'm "strong" and "I can do it." That's not me, but she did the opposite of what I expected. Have you ever felt words hit you with so much force that you physically shrink backwards? Those words hit me with so hard it was like a punch in the gut, I felt myself sway back. Finally I answered through tears: "I can't."

"That's right, you can't because you won't. Because you are not a quitter!" She answered with even more force, and I knew she was right.

It took a huge break down to realize that I can't quit, I won't quit, and the reason is because I am strong. To realize how strong I really was I had to have someone give me the permission to give up. I realized just because I was tired of fighting didn't mean I was going to give up. 

I can't give up because I won't. I just won't. I won't let myself. I realized that I am tired, all the time I am tired. But I am not tired of being strong. I am still so grateful that someone saw it in me enough to boldly point it out. If I wouldn't have been granted permission to give up, I wouldn't have realized it in myself, and since then it has been freeing. 

The rest of the semester after I realized I can't give up because I won't, I still struggled, I still felt the sting when a guy was mad over his 3.1 percent deduction on a paper that gave him a B instead of an A. I still got down on myself when everyone was sharing their scores on a paper and knowing I could have done better than I did, if I didn't have this chronic illness bringing me (and my grades) down. I still slightly compare. 

It' s either a comparison between sick-me to them, or sick-me to non-sick-me, but I don't let it get me down. It's like ripping off a band aid too fast, I allow it to hurt and sting for a second, and then I attempt to move on and deal with me the best I can. Because I know I won't give up. So why linger on things that will just frustrate me to want to give up?

Learning to be ok with myself, my sick-self and learning just how strong I really am by realizing I can't quit because I won't has been two very important things for me in my confidence. I hope I can continue to be strong enough to overcome my comparisons I make towards myself and towards others. I have already realized I can't not, I just can't, but I do know that I can choose to be strong enough to not let them get to me anymore.

-The Lyme Warrior

Documentary on Lyme Disease

This semester I have been working with a group of people in a Video Productions class. They were in charge of making a short documentary, and they chose to do it on Lyme Disease, and they interviewed me for the documentary. And they did an amazing job! So click the link below to check it out.

The Lyme Warrior

Diet and Exercise: The Great Conundrum

Food glorious food!

"I can't eat that..."
"Why?"
"Because I have Lyme Disease..."

This is an excuse I feel like I use on the daily. It's part of life with Lyme. I have found, and others I have talked to with Lyme as well, that if you are not willing to change your diet, you will struggle to beat this disease. For the past two years I have changed my diet to work against Lyme, and it is a struggle. I had to work super hard at first, but now I feel like following a strict diet is one way I can have total control over my disease.

Food has always been a love of my life. In fact, it has been the love of my life. I wrote my mission president before my service for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I told him I was in a relationship with food. I love food. Fast forward, however, and a year or so later I'm home early from my mission, with Lyme. For 6 months I relied only on prescriptions to help me. I had heard the suggestion to quit gluten and sugar within the first 2-3 months of my diagnosis. It wasn't until after the holidays and the opening of 2015 year that I decided to quit gluten and sugar.

I knew there was no way in heaven I could quit both at the same time, so I chose to quit the one I knew I could live without: sugar.

The sweets and candy's wasn't actually that hard, the hard thing was giving up my addiction to Diet Mountain Dew. I started drinking it on my mission to stay awake and survive the chronic fatigue that was controlling my life. I kept up the addiction after the mission and into my treatments because I was still very tired, I would fall asleep while driving 10 minutes to work. However, the inflammatories that are in gluten and sugar are what Lyme thrives on. So caffeine and sugar had to go. It took about 2 months, the first 2 weeks I was brutally cranky and tired, but after that I started to find I had more energy, I was still chronically exhausted, but I had more energy in that exhaustion. I had conquered the sugar cravings, and gluten was next.

Gluten is my favorite food, which I didn't realize until I had to give it up. It took about 6 months for me to quit. I feel like I sound like a smoker, or an alcoholic, but I seriously could have gone to a Gluten Anonymous meeting: "Hey I'm Sadie, and I'm addicted to gluten." I loved, and still love bread,  pastas, cereals, and basically anything with gluten.

So to give up this love of my life I would say it took about 6 months before I was finally completely off gluten. I would make it 4 or 5 days going strong and then the cravings would hit by the weekend and I would be craving pasta and pizza with a giant loaf of bread to go on the side. What did help was my mama quit gluten for her own personal health issues too, and that made things easier on both of us. Mostly because I think I had someone to complain to about how bad I missed eating my favorite cereals in the morning.

Once gluten was given up I stayed strong and off of both of those things, the doctors suggested to go off of dairy too, especially at the beginning of 2016 when my gal-bladder took a hit from all of the antibiotics I had been taking for the past year and a half. It actually wasn't htat hard to quit diary, I never drink milk, I think of it as cereal sauce, and I hadn't been eating cereal for about 9 months a the point of me quitting diary. I drink almond milk, and cook and use that instead. Sometimes I will really crave cheese, and that is hard, but dairy was the easiest of all the groups to give up.

Recently however, after almost 2 years of being off sugar, I have been put on the paleo diet. It is a diet of meats, veggies, nuts and berries. It limits almost all sugars and all grains. I used to eat rice and quinoa every day after I quit gluten. Now I can't eat any of those things. It was hard at first, but no where as near as hard as gluten.

After suffering through the paleo diet this summer, I was then put on the diet from hell. For about a month I could only eat 11 things: Greet yogurt, almonds, pecans, eggs, fish, organic grass fed beef, avocados, spinach, kale, berries, and broccoli. I was MISERABLE! I was hungry ALL THE TIME! I wasn't a big fan of the paleo diet, but being on the new diet, I just wanted to be back on paleo, I missed all my veggies and chicken! So I sucked it up, and did the diet. I was very cranky the first 2 weeks of the diet, trying to figure out how to stay full, eating at least every 2 hours. Now, after that diet, I feel like I can do paleo, and that is what I am back on again.

 The harder thing is trying to eat with friends. It is hard to go on dates and explain what I can or can't eat. Because I don't go out to eat, but that is a big thing to do on dates. I don't do that. So when I end up going on dates instead of saying "Yeah I can eat that piece of meat, wrapped in lettuce, oh and is the beef grass fed, or organic, because I can't have it if not." That is just tedious to have to deal with on a first date. So limiting my food makes my life a lot harder than it needs to be on dates.

Sometimes I cheat, and I regret it the next day. I notice a difference when I eat sugar, and I notice an even bigger difference when I eat gluten. I get brain fog and just can't think, or move. I'm slower mentally, and physically. And where ice cream or a bowl of noodles might be celestial to my tastebuds, the next day they are not!

Now those are the hard things about limiting my diet. I haven't gotten to the best parts! I feel better, I feel healthier. I feel like I can tangibly control something about my health that doesn't involve taking a substance that comes from a doctor or a health store. And I think that is the best part--being able to control something about my situation.

Exercise: Cheaper than therapy

I have talked about limiting your diet if you have Lyme, but there is more than just healthy eating that I can control and do to kick this disease into remission. Exercise. Working out. This is something that is almost like voodoo to someone with a chronic illness. Especially when they deal with chronic pain. The problem with Lyme is the Herxhimer Reactions (to read about those click here).

If you don't want to read all about it in a different post I guess I can recap it: So when you over work your body and it heats up you naturally kill off lots of bacteria. When you kill off too much of the bacteria too fast it is hard for your body to detoxify all the dead bacteria carcasses floating around in your body. So you get itches, aches, pains, and extreme fatigue.

I love playing, I love to swim, and I love sports, and hiking and working out. The most important thing with I have found is to know your limits. I know mine, but unfortunately I will push them past their limits. It is not always the best, in the moment the adrenaline might be fine, but I usually regret it after I finish whatever it was that I was doing.


It is a great conundrum to me because, for example, if I'm in a basketball game because I know how I should be able to play. I know how good I am, but with my body being infected with Lyme, I can't go as hard as I would like too. So I work harder, trying to play through the pain, and the cramping, stiff muscles and I get more frustrated and down on myself, I miss more shots because I get in my own head. Then after the game, even the next day, I feel the aftermath. As soon as I sit up in the morning my body just aches. I usually describe it as feeling like I got hit by a bus.

As good as exercise is for those who want to beat this disease, you have to exercise, even if it is just a walk. I remember when just getting up and showering was as if I had ran a marathon. You have to exercise.

All in all, it is hard to discipline yourself. If you struggle with Lyme and desperately want to feel in control of something in your life besides going to the pharmacy every other day, I would recommend changing your diet, educating yourself on a healthy life style, and pushing yourself to work out, but not to over do it.


-The Lyme Warrior.

Feature News Story:

I have always struggled with trying to explain and talk about Lyme. I have written it multiple times. I have too much I want to say, and too much that I don't need to say. So when I was paired up in one of my college classes and was told that we were to write a news feature story on each other, I wasn't worried about what I would write. I was worried for the poor soul that would have to write about me.

In the interview with Hayden Hunter, the guy I was paired up with, I was determined to not talk about my disease. I was determined that he would not find out I was sick, and he could write about something different. Of all the things I learned about Hayden in that interview, the biggest thing I learned is that in talking about myself, it is impossible to avoid talking about Lyme. "I am not Lyme, and Lyme is not me, but I am who I am today because of Lyme." It is true. And I couldn't avoid it.

After interviewing Hayden for 45 mins, and asking him questions he started asking me questions, I don't know how he got into it, but he did. And I found myself, for the next, about hour and 45 mins talking about Lyme. I felt bad, and I was worried, I have learned in the past to not open up too much about Lyme at first. It is a lot to take in, especially when you are interviewing the cutest guy in your class. So Hayden got the whole enchilada. And I left frustrated and embarrassed. I had thrown up way too much information, I worried and fretted about it so much, that I almost forgot I still had to write his story from my interview on him....

Then I read his story. I almost started tearing up as I read it. He had summarized my story in less than 800 words (as requited for the assignment). He had done something that I had never been able to do.

I am now considering making this into a brochure for future reference when people ask me about Lyme. I am only half joking, but with Hayden's permission I am at least posting it here for now. Because it is the perfect summary, written in news article form, about my dealings with Lyme.

REXBURG, Idaho – Each year 300,000 lives are affected by the fastest-spreading, vector-borne chronic illness, Lyme Disease. In 2014 Sadie Williams found herself counted as one of those 300,000. For most, living with this incurable disease would have them depressed and hopeless. Sadie however has been an inspiration to many as she says “I am not Lyme Disease, Lyme disease is not me, but I am who I am today because of Lyme disease.”
 

Sadie decided to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2013 and received a call to serve in the South Carolina, Columbia mission. Six months after arriving in South Carolina she was bitten by a tick. She began to get very sick and would have mood swings. After a year of service Sadie was sent home to Mapleton, Utah to try figure out what was wrong. Lyme disease can mimic up to 300 different diseases and is easily misdiagnosed. One doctor diagnosed her with “bipolar disorder” but Sadie knew that was not the case. She said “I know who I am… I am not bipolar.” The Williams family had been struggling with Sadie’s different behavior since her return home. They knew their daughter as a sweet girl, but Sadie explained how she became different and rude when she got home.
 

Sadie said “It takes up to two years to diagnose Lyme, for me it took nine months, I was blessed.” After some time visiting various doctors, on September 4, 2014 Sadie was diagnosed with Lyme Disease.  After the Williams family found out, Sadie’s mom April said “I felt relief.” Sadie and her family were glad to discover what Sadie had been struggling with for the past nine months, but they were then thrown into a bigger world of doctor appointments, endless medicine, and self internet research in order to treat the disease. A year after Sadie was diagnosed with Lyme she had four shoe boxes full of empty prescription and supplement bottles, and a year after that she had doubled her medicine shoe boxes to eight. Sadie would take up to 50 different pills a day. She is currently doing a cleanse from all pills and is doing her best to eat healthy and exercise. While most people feel good after working out and have a “runner’s high,” Sadie says she just hurts after she works out. But the pain of working out is better than the pain she feels if she just sits. She explained that, “you’re not going to get rid of the pain--it will always be there.” Sadie related Lyme Disease to a toddler by saying, “Lyme is just like a crying three year old, you have to give it the attention it needs.”

 Pain is just part of Sadie’s life now and when she accepted that things began to change for her. She decided to do something about her situation as she didn’t want Lyme disease to define her. She chose to create an awareness of the disease she and thousands of others share. Sadie Williams is the self-proclaimed “Lyme Warrior” and has created a blog talking about Lyme disease and how to deal with it. Sadie has written an article for the Deseret News about the struggles early returned missionaries face and how to overcome them. She is focusing on others and says her life is fulfilled by blogging. Sadie is serving in way she never thought she would, and proclaimed that, “you don’t need a black name tag or a skirt to help others.” She says it is weird when people thank her for her articles or her blog, but she is grateful for the opportunity to help others.
 

Both Sadie and her Mom would advise people diagnosed with Lyme Disease to not try to do it all on their own, but to find help. Sadie said there is not a lot you can do to comfort someone who has Lyme Disease, but she says to just listen. Sadie’s mom said, “I would sit down and cry with them.” Sadie wants to be one of those helpful resources, as she says, “God let me help people in His way.”
 

Sadie has a strong desire to keep Lyme to herself, but knows that she can help others by sharing her experience. Two years after being diagnosed and fighting Lyme Disease she was able to express her sentiments. “I would not wish this upon anyone,” but, she added, “I would not change it.”
 

For more information or to read Sadie’s blog, visit www.blamethetick.blogspot.com.

-The Lyme Warrior

The Pit

Everyone is a closet poet in my opinion. A couple months ago I published a poem in an anthology on my college campus and I forgot I haven't shared it yet... So with much embarrassment I am sharing my poem that I wrote:

The Pit

     Distortion.
             Docile.
                      Dank.  
                             Dark.

I have fallen again into the pit.  
The dark pit. The deep dark pit. 
I scream inside. 
Nobody hears, nobody even tries.
Why don't they understand? 
Because nobody likes to see
loved ones' cry,
Because it is easier
to turn the blind eye.  

But while I'm blind 
to happiness, euphoria
and serendipity. 
They are blind to
my emptiness, 
my horror, my nothing...

      Nothing...
                Nothing...  

Feeling nothing is terrifying in the pit.
But feeling darkness is worse. 
Numbness is a pleasure
compared to the stabbing,
strenuous tears that rip my body
caused by the darkness. 
It starts in my chest. 
Darkness prefers the rib cage
because it can attack the heart.  

It builds and tears me apart
from the inside out. I scream inward. 
I've learned to scream inward
to save everyone else from myself.
I'm not a hero, 
I'm the victim with no hero. 

 I will subcome or struggle,
die or survive alone. 
What kind of darkness is this?
It is the darkness of anguish.  
The darkness of nothing...

      Nothing... 
              Nothing.... 

 At first the nothing is a relief. 
But then it is so numbing
it's painful. It stings and burns. 
I can't move. I can't fight. 
The darkness swirls around me
in the pit. I feel nothing.  

"The greater the struggle the greater the triumph."  
So they say. 
But the harder I struggle the deeper I fall.

  Down...
       Down...  
             Down...  

Into the crushing that is the abyss;
 Excruciating. Exhausting. Exquisite.
 How can I feel everything, 
 yet feel nothing?  

Crazy. I hear that word. But more so;
I feel that word. 
It slips like a knife 
between the rib cage 
of my already formed self doubts. 
Society holds the murder weapon, 
as I gush the blood 
that is the Crazy.  
I am that word.   

Attention Seeker. Over Dramatic. 
Ostentatious. Crazy. 
Each a reason for society
 to quietly slice me open.
And the thing is:
I let them because, 
I believe them.   

This pit of darkness. 
Of hopelessness. Of deep anguish. 
This pit of pain; 
yet pit of absolute nothingness; 
it can't be real. 
How can someone feel everything 
and nothing? 

 I've got to get over myself. 
Suck it up. 
Pull it together. 
Stop being weak. 
I'm acting crazy. 
Stop seeking attention. 
Stop being dramatic.    

I sink deeper. 
The harder I try to "stop" 
the deeper I fall.  

   Down...
         Down... 
                 Down....  

  Distortion. 
         Docile.  
              Dank. 
                       Dark...

 I am the pit. 


-The Lyme Warrior