Closing the door

I am on antibiotics again, since I finally acknowledged being sick again back in February. This summer has been brutally hard to live through. When I was first diagnosed with Lyme disease ten years ago I had to grapple with my own mortality (which I wrote about for Seven Ponds here) intimately. Though I prepared myself to die, through all my healing, I never closed that door.
Working through the past months of antibiotics, I finally realized that--that I'd never really chosen to be fully in this life again, that I'd kept one foot inching towards the door out all the time.

In having to admit that I was sick again, in going back to the doctors' again and going back into treatment, I had to stop denying that I have a chronic illness. Moving out of denial was painful but I hadn't even suspected the aftereffects of it: that in acceptance, I also stepped firmly into this world and closed that door.

On Acceptance

Lyme disease reared its ugly head in my life way back in July. Nine months ago. I made sure that I brushed the night sweats and daily fevers off as ‘just fighting off a cold’ or “that nasty flu that is going around.” I ignored the fact that I was blowing off more and more commitments because of fatigue, always promising to reschedule things to some vague time in a two weeks or so when I was sure that I would be feeling so much better and have more time.

It took the past three weeks of intense sore throats, disorientation and not being able to get out of bed again for me to admit that what is going on, that what has been going on, is a recurrence of the disease that has shaped my life.

The past few months I have been unduly harsh to the people around me as I have been filled with fury and flipping between rage and depression as I’ve become less and less able at keeping on top of my life. I felt like I was fraying at the seams and stumbling to get to work. Finally, last Friday, I admitted to myself that I was experiencing a recurrence of Lyme Disease, that it wouldn’t pass just by waiting it out, that I haven’t been sick with the ‘never ending flu,’ as I had begun to refer to it.

I'd gone in to see Matt again, for an MAT session, and he asked how my body was doing.

"Well," I said, "it hurts. But I don't think that it's injury but a Lyme flare-up."

"What does a Lyme flare-up look like," he asked me.

"Weird muscular pain and achy joints and just feeling like I am about to get the flu."

"And how long does a flare-up last?"

"Oh, a few weeks," I said, but as I said it, I realized that I'd been complaining about these symptoms since the holidays. No, since the end of summer. Since I started a fellowship back in July. Oh shit. I'd managed to completely ignore that the sum of the symptoms I'd been experiencing was Lyme.

Once I’d admitted to myself and accepted that I was dealing with Lyme Disease again, I began making different choices out of respect for where I am, health wise, and what I need to do to get better. I have different expectations for myself and have begun to treat myself gently instead of forcing myself to get it all done, right now, no matter how I feel. I reached out to family and friends. Since acceptance, I’ve become quiet, gentle and patient. There is a sense of ease to my days that didn’t exist when I was denying that I was sick.

It was incredibly difficult for me to come to this point of acceptance and I only did when I had become so sick that there was no denying it anymore. I lost almost everything of myself in my first go-around with Lyme’s that I would much prefer to deny that it’s never gone away than to deal with it.

running solid

I am four sessions into working with Matt, my Muscle Activation Technique practitioner, and whew-weee! has it made a difference.

After a cruddy morning, I decided to run it off and it was such a good run: I felt perfectly balanced and so evenly supported from my hams and glutes.

I think a combination of MAT and good work with my oh-so-inspiring trainer who has been targeting that area as well. but I tell you, it feels good to land and feel fully supported all the way up from the foot to the hips on each and every step!

diapause

My dad was making fun of me last week for writing a blog about running when I haven't even been running.

But I used to run, so much and all the time that my whole identity was wrapped up in being strong, being fast and being a runner. And then the injuries and illness started piling on and breaking me down and so did my sense of self.

I used to run and I am looking forward to running again, in the not-to-far-off future, but right now, it feels really good to be taking care of decades-long injuries and building strength again.

beauty of exercise

One of my clients has been working really hard over the past nine months to get in shape. She's never really been active at all, ever, but started pilates to get in shape for her wedding.

The first four months were really about laying a solid foundation and building new movement patterns. She's gone from two sessions a week to four (one session a week outside, making use of San Francisco's terrain to get in hills, stairs and soak up some natural beauty) and has blown my mind with her commitment.

Yesterday, after her session we were talking about where she wants to get to and where she has come from so far. She said that working out has made her strong and that she has stopped hating specific parts of her body and instead, loving the way that she feels: strong.

This is the true beauty of exercise, I think. You begin to understand your body as one, you inhabit it and begin to love what you can do in it, rather than hate on fat thighs or shapeless arms or whatever it is that has been bugging you.

remembering the lyme years

It's nearly ten and I am still working away.

I've been up since six am, taught, wrote, got a workout in, saw some friends, grocery shopped, made dinner AND I STILL HAVE ENERGY!

I was sitting here and just thought about how long the day actually is.

I think that those of you with chronic illness can understand, but in the worst of my Lyme years, my days were about three hours long, sometimes five or six hours long, and every minute was a struggle to be present, to be engaged, to just be. The rest of the time I was in bed or on the couch, sleeping. I used to always wonder at how people did so very much in a day and now I know.

My uncle recently sent me an article on Lyme Disease that profiled a woman who's life has basically been reduced to doctors appointments and the few hours here and there when she can be up and about. I read it, and even though I have lived that life, it all sounded so surreal and impossible.

I am glad to be on this side of things.

Running out to meet the day

Today, I feel like I am back. 

I woke up really early, just as the sun was rising and my first thought was that I wanted to run so I laced up my shoes and hit the road. I felt strong and the running came easily.

Something dramatic has shifted in me over the past few weeks. I feel so much stronger now—not the stronger that you get from working out consistently but the stronger that is the opposite of depletion, a sense that I have a foundation now, that my energy reserves are beginning to fill up again.

Lyme Disease is long and difficult to understand. I never really looked sick, except to the people who knew me well and were monitoring my health, that is to say, to my mother and yet, at the worst of it, I often didn’t have the energy to climb up the stairs and would pass out on the couch before making it to bed. Being this tired and sick made me feel two dimensional, dried out and brittle. Last year was the first year that I could really invest in my life, but I couldn’t withstand any stress, any change to my schedule or fight off any cold. I still felt like a light breeze could shred and scatter me so I have been keeping really tight reigns on my life, hardly going out or venturing off the strict and narrow lifestyle I know that I can support. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, I feel strong and solid and supple. Vibrant.

It is pretty incredible.

I’m not planning my runs or workouts right now, just doing something when I am inspired to so I am not running far--I ran 3 miles this morning, and walked another mile but it felt good. was the early morning and so beautiful in the park.

My ITBand has been acting up lately but I learned another piece of the puzzle: when I land on my left foot, I feel my left hamstring and glute strongly engage to support my landing but when I land on my right foot, only my quad fires. It’s a really unsupported landing. And then my it band starts getting really tight. My current theory is that I need to get my thigh and hip muscles to all work together so that my TFL and glute med don’t have to do more than their share of the work, get really tight and then yank on the ITB. I am working with Matt, the MAT practitioner again this Friday and I am really curious to hear what he has to say about it all. I will definitely update!