Lyme Disease - a gravely serious medical issue

My dear friend Margie honored me by sending an email from her home in the east coast of the US.  Though this has nothing to do with Guatemala or our lives here, I want to share it for two reasons - it highlights a terribly serious issue, and, it shows how sometimes expats grieve powerlessly for friends who are suffering back home.

For years I've known Margie as one of the most dynamic, energetic, wise and insightful, determined, focused, and loving friends.  A fighter.  It's utterly not in her nature to sit at home and coddle a minor disease. Yet Lyme has brought her to her knees, a shadow of her former self.

With her permission, following is her email which she sent to a number of her family and friends. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers, and simply learn of the gravity of Lyme disease.  Take precautions to avoid tick-borne illness, and act quickly if you have a tick bite.  Please click the link to the CNN site and read the effects of chronic Lyme and why many Lyme patients who are otherwise mentally-healthy are in so much pain that they try to commit (or, commit) suicide.

Let's let Margie tell her story:

Of course, I don't expect you to watch this entire video.  But I am still told, "Oh, I thought you were busy."  "You need to get a life."   "What if you just make yourself go to the meeting?"  "You look great", "But I saw you last month and you seemed fine to me."  "But I thought you were getting better"  "You just need to get outside"

Lyme disease has been in my body since I was 10, along with Bartonella.  The 5th time I got it in May 2011, along with Babesia,  just knocked me down, targeting blood and neurological.   Cycling on and off the first year, worse after each round of antibiotics, and now debilitating.  How much the current debilitation is due to the strong medicine I am on is in question.  I won't bore you with the list of symptoms, but the hardest are constant headaches, bone pain, something called Dysautonomia, (severe), and blood levels the same as leukemia.  (all invisible). 

Please take just a few minutes to look this over.  It was over a year ago now that I came very close to taking my life because of the pain, despair, aloneness, and psychological symptoms. I desperately needed to be done, and the pain was too much to be able to think. about anything else, or even access logic and reason.  (Better now on that front).   I continue to fight this disease,  feeling different each day.   People only ever see me on a very good day, and they assume it is the same all the time.  Many times I go 5 or 6 days without getting out of the recliner, and then for no reason, I will feel a bit better.   Just trying to help people understand a little.  ***I don't need you to do anything.  I just want you to understand.

Thanks for whatever you read or watch

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1037462

Love you
Margie