The Burden that Blooms: Our Journey with Chronic Lyme

A profound source of growth.

I lie crouch low upon dried mud littered with twigs and dead leaves — totally alert, poised, safely hidden behind tangled branches, ready to attack at a moment’s notice. I cannot see the enemy but I can hear them: the faint, unintelligible shouts of orders carrying on the wind. I wait, biding my time until…there! He is creeping slowly past me unawares, a look of pure determination in his eyes. This is the time. I leap from my natural enclosure, pointing my sturdy stick firmly at his flank, “Bang, Bang, Bang!” I shout victoriously. Before managing to face me he grips his chest, groans, and slumps to his defeat.

These childhood skirmishes took place in Richmond Park (London’s largest royal deer park) twenty years before I knew anything about Lyme disease. If you would have told me then that thousands of infected ticks were themselves poised to attack the ten-year-old me, potentially ruining my life, I likely wouldn’t have taken you seriously.

And Lyme disease and its many co-infections are something to be taken very seriously indeed.

Before I met my partner over a year ago, this life-changing illness was just an obscure factoid lying dormant in the recesses of my memory. I must have assumed it to be so rare it didn’t warrant much…