TOUCHED BY LYME: Casting about for a new way to look at Lyme
A Lyme patient finds that a cast on her foot changes everything.
I received an email from Lyme patient Michel Lynn Inaba, relating a change in her life. Here’s how she describes it:
I stepped off a curb wrong and broke a bone in my foot 2 weeks ago and have been stuck in the Bay Area. The interesting thing is the response that I have gotten to this “visible” injury that should heal in time. People simply can’t do enough for me! I am given constant offers of help, no one ever says “No” to a request and they are infinitely patient.
It is so opposite the reaction people have to Lyme disease sufferers that it’s disorienting! I get pulled in to thinking that this is the way the world wants to treat me BECAUSE I DESERVE IT. Then I wake up and realize that as soon as I no longer have a cast on my leg, the world will still be uncaring and indifferent to our suffering. As inconvenient as this cast is, I tell you, I will be very reluctant to give it up.
Comments, readers? Have you had a similar experience?
The TOUCHED BY LYME blog is written by Dorothy Kupcha Leland, CALDA’s VP for Education and Outreach. Contact her at dleland@lymedisease.org.
I also suffer from Lyme and it's many co-infections, and I am treated the same way. Like a mental illness, if people can't see it "it doesn't really exist" I am so tired of hearing, "you look fine, you must be all better now". Research & awareness are key for us, until there is more of that, we will remain invisible, for we are to exhausted & sick to fight for our selves & no one is listening or they just plain don't believe us, or think we are crazy & attention seeking.
Not too long after I contracted Lyme and didn't know it, I required knee surgery. I soon found a set of crutches always got me the cab in NYC and a stool in a bar.
But with family, I was shocked at the lack of help even when I had crutches. I remember I had gotten so hurt by having to ask for obvious help that I just quit. Then one night when we were all eating on our laps, as everyone was finishing dinner, my mother looked at me and said, "You're not eating?" It never occured to them that I couldn't bring a plate and a glass in to the living room while on two crutches.