ADVANCED TOPICS IN LYME DISEASE
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ILADS Evidence-based Lyme Treatment Guidelines

by: Shadow

Way back in the late 80's or early 90's I saw a movie which I don't remember anything about except one line that stuck with me:

"when life hands you a lemon, make lemonade."

I immediately identified myself with that saying.  I have been a fighter all my life, always facing challenges head-on, and working my way through them.  Life has also been very generous with me when it comes to handing out lemons.

My first challenges were of the type that every child faces when they have to define their role in the home.  I was raised in a culture where corporal punishment was not only deemed acceptable, but also necessary.  I received less than my fair share because my older sister took the brunt of it.  I always was "the good girl" and never spoke up to my parents or argue with them.  When I was twelve, my baby brother was born, and corporal punishment of him started about when he started crawling.  Once when my father raised a hand on my brother, I shouted "are you hitting him because you think it's effective, or are you doing it because you enjoy it?"  My father's hand froze in the air.  Not only was I shouting at him, I was also accusing him of being a monster.  I thought I was in for the beating of my life.  Instead, he walked away.  The next day he came back to me and stated that he hit us because that's the way he was raised, and he didn't know another way.  He said he had never thought about how it would make us think about him, and promised never to hit any of us again.  He was as good as his word. 

When I was in fourth grade, a revolution began in my country which ultimately overthrew the government.  I remember the nights when we went to sleep with the sounds of gunfire and shouts of revolutionaries.  My mother always wanted us to stay away from the windows because she was afraid we'd get hit by a stray bullet.  Every child had their own collection of empty bullet shells.  I also clearly remember the slogans and bloody hand prints on the walls everywhere.  The government was overthrown in a couple of years, soon to be followed by a war with a neighboring country.  So the sounds of protests and gunfire at night were replaced by taped up windows, sounds of airplanes, and anti-war craft missiles exploding.  Through it all, revolution and war, we would get up every morning and go to school, not knowing if we'd be alive by the end of the day.  Needless to say, I was nervous and highly anxious.  I developed extremely graphic and disturbing nightmares which made me terrified of sleeping.  I had made up a prayer and memorized it, asking and begging God every night to let me have a night of sleep without the terror of the nightmares. 

The prayers never worked, at least not exactly.  Instead, I started instinctively practicing deep breathing and trying to clear my mind.  After a while, it became a routine for me, and I would imagine a white rectangular shape in front of me, I called it the "white door."  I would focus all of my attention on the white door, and my fears would dissolve.  Only two decades later I realized I had been meditating.  It helped me calm  down before sleeping, but it didn't take away the nightmares.  Not being one to give up easily, I started practicing talking to myself in my dreams, there would be a part of me that was completely absorbed in the dream, but another part that would talk to me, remind me that none of this is real, and with time, I would even start instructing myself in the dream to do something different.  For example, one of my worst nightmares was being chased by a murderer who was trying to stab me.  I first began to tell myself that in my dreams I could fly and he could not catch me, so I began flying.  When I advanced further with these techniques, I told myself to turn around, face him and get stabbed!  "See," I would say to myself, "that didn't hurt at all."  My nightmares resolved after that.  I now know there is a name for this; it's called "lucid dreaming."  I still practice lucid dreaming sometimes, but mostly now I like to allow my dreams to take me whereever they want, since I'm not scared of them any more.

When I was in my birth country, I was a real popular kid because I excelled in math and science.  I moved to the United States during my Junior year in high school and my status changed overnight from popular to nerd.  I struggled with culture shock, language barriers, and home sickness.  I also started working part time during the school year and full time over the summers because we needed money.  The first couple of years of college were very difficult because I was trying to work full time, and I failed a bunch of classes because I was too exhausted and too confused to show up.  Meanwhile, however, by the time I was out of high school I had landed a job as a computer programmer before I had even turned 18.  At some point I realized that no matter how well I worked as a programmer, I was not going to get paid for it properly unless I had a degree.  I transferred to a four-year college, committed myself to the school work while still working part time, was on the Dean's list within a year, and graduated with honors.

After graduation I started working as a research and development engineer at a great company.  By then, I had already had six years of computer programming under my belt.  I was newly married, had a great paying job at a successful company, and felt I was set for life.  Within less than a year of starting that job, I developed severe tendinitis from repetitive strain injury.  Despite doing all the right ergonomic repairs, and faithfully following my physical therapy, my pain and weakness continued to progress and within a year, at the age of 25, I was declared permanently disabled in both arms (from the base of the neck to the tips of all fingers).

Permanently disabled?  Oh No!  Not me!  It took me a couple of more years to realize that I could never work long hours on computers again, but I had every intention of getting the full function of my hands back.  I also took this as an opportunity presented to my by life to re-evaluate my goals; something of a second chance at deciding what I really wanted to be.  That is when I decided to go back to school and become a doctor.  I quit my job to go back to school right after my daughter's 1st birthday.

Getting into medical school was not easy for me.  First, my undergraduate degree was in Computer Science and Mathematics.  Second, those early years in college when I was failing so many classes came back to haunt me.  The first time I took the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), I performed well above the average, but my transcript had big dark spots on it, and I didn't get in.  I talked to an advisor who told me I'd need a Master's Degree to get in to a good medical school.  That's what I did.  I received my Masters in Arts in Physiology and Molecular Biology.  I also took the MCAT again and scored so high that I had to turn down interviews from several medical schools, and had multiple acceptances.

The challenges and the hardships of going through medical school and residency while raising two children (I had my second child after the first year of medical school) are too many and too painful to describe.  To sum it up, I was 28 years old when I left my old job to go back to school.  When I finished residency, I was 41 years old and a divorced a single mother.  However, to me, the bottom line was that I had made it.